The airport: the desire and the nightmare
The social stakeholders who ensure Catalonia's economic dynamism welcome the agreement to expand the airport. A change that, for example, could allow nonstop flights from Japan. Or allow more direct flights to the United States. But the questions that still remain unanswered are: who will the passengers be and what will they bring to us?
The hope is for professional profiles to arrive from the other side of the world: to attend conferences and trade fairs, or to start or invest in high-value-added businesses and, if possible, to foster job creation. People for whom stopovers are a waste of time, an inconvenience. People who spend a lot—ideally above the current average of €211 per tourist per day—and who don't litter. And the nightmare is that this expansion will further increase the number of tourists in a saturated city with a weary neighborhood, amidst the accelerated deterioration of the reputation of this economic activity, at a time of record visitor numbers (almost 20 million in 2024). The hope is that the airport expansion will benefit Catalan industry, a sector that has proven more resilient in the face of crises, and reduce, at least proportionally, the weight of tourism in the country. Because the added value of an hour worked in the hospitality industry is negligible compared to an hour worked in a biotechnology company. But it's worth remembering that only certain parts of Catalonia have industrial or technology companies.
We must accept that we live in a traditionally tourist-driven country with little prospect of the phenomenon subsiding. And, if it were to happen, we would soon see headlines about the strong (negative) economic impact this represents. Therefore, we must value what tourism brings us and, at the same time, rethink and redesign it with strategic plans and decisive public policies, both to address social unrest and to organize visitors. A new tourism adapted to current social, economic, and environmental conditions.
To begin with, although Catalonia is a small country and, therefore, theoretically easy to communicate, the reality is that it is poorly connected, with underused airports that could help relieve congestion in the capital. Considering all the distances, London has four airports within 100 kilometers: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and Luton. Reus Airport and Girona Airport, also a similar distance from Barcelona, are surrounded by diverse tourist areas that go unused for more than half the year.
Given the lack of control over who will be the passengers, the best thing to do is to do everything possible to encourage professional profiles and at the same time prepare for the possibility that more tourists will end up choosing them. It's true that productivity and tourism don't go hand in hand, but between having a revenue of twenty billion euros and almost half a million people employed and not having it, there's no argument. At least, until we find an alternative way to generate it.
