Little by little, the expansion of El Prat is moving forward, after having achieved reach a consensus The support of the various administrations is crucial. Aena's project now faces one of its most important stages to become a reality with the bidding process for drafting the master plan in the coming days. This is the necessary step before construction can begin, with the schedule planned to start in 2029.

Barcelona Airport continues to expand and has been surpassing its goals for some time now. After achieving its first the more than 55 million passengers last year, the infrastructure continues to grow this year and is aiming for a new record, challenging its theoretical limits of maximum capacity.

With the expansion agreement of El Prat One of the main conflicts that the airport has been dragging on for decades has also been resolved. If Barcelona Airport is very close to the city, it is also close to the Catalan capital's other major infrastructure. On the other side of the Llobregat River is the Port of Barcelona, which has also been growing towards the city of El Prat, concentrating more activity in that area.

When the Government already has on the table the project to expand El Prat and begins to take the first steps, the different political groups They have not been able to agree on the future of the airport In a monographic debate on infrastructure held throughout this week in the Catalan parliament, one of the clearest proposals was that of Esquerra (the Catalan Left), which criticized the expansion project as "incompatible with a public policy committed to protecting health," as MP Jordi Albert reminded Health Minister Olga Pané.

With the agreement to expand Barcelona airport already on the table, Esquerra will seek to have the Parliament reject it this week in the framework of the monographic debate on infrastructure. Faced with the Government's commitment to a more connected airport, the opposition was divided in the session held this Tuesday between those who called for halting the project agreed upon between Salvador Illa's executive and the Spanish government, and those who defended accelerating it.

In 2007, together with Germà Bel and Pedro Nueno, I had the honour of participating in the Iese event where Barcelona's civil and economic society demanded the individualised management of El Prat airport. That battle was lost. A tender called by the Zapatero government that would have represented an important advance was cancelled by the Rajoy government, in 2011, in one of its first decisions. Unfortunately, since then the prospect has receded.