Ara in English - Prat

Airports, banks and the country we want to be

Editorial — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 17:23:08 +0000

These days, two key issues are converging. On the one hand, the Generalitat (Catalan government) and a large part of civil society are insisting on expanding El Prat Airport to strengthen Catalonia's intercontinental connection. On the other hand, Banc Sabadell is the subject of a takeover by BBVA. Two seemingly unrelated news items that, viewed from a national perspective, are part of the same debate: what do we want to be? What kind of economy do we want to build?

The arrival of high-speed rail at El Prat Airport is reactivated.

Natàlia Vila — Thu, 15 May 2025 18:12:19 +0000

A new political agreement, this time between Junts and the Ministry of Transport, has brought an old infrastructure project that had been shelved for two decades out of the window. A delegation from Carles Puigdemont's party announced this Thursday at noon from El Prat de Llobregat that they have reached an agreement with the Spanish government to "unblock" the airport's connection to high-speed rail.

The expansion of El Prat: a project for the country

Editorial — Sun, 30 May 2021 17:06:27 +0000

The need to expand El Prat airport should be beyond any doubt. As should be the fact that this expansion should be done with a great political, economic and citizen consensus that involves the conciliation of the economic view (obvious and essential) with the environmental one (on which Europe has the last word) and the social one (neighbours affected by the noise). The manifesto launched this Sunday by more than 200 entities, born from the proposal of Aena to move the project forward, expresses the urgency and importance of this bet, which connects with a historical claim of Catalan society. We only have to remember the civil society event at Iese in 2007, as a result of which the Zapatero government called for a tender that was finally cancelled in 2011 by the Rajoy government. A decade later, and on the verge of overcoming the pandemic, it is logical and timely to resume that frustrated momentum if we do not want to lose another decade. Throughout these years the Barcelona airport has been increasing the number of passengers until, before the outbreak of the virus, it approached the capacity limit of 55 million: if in 2007 33 million passengers passed through its facilities, in 2019 the figure had already risen to 53 million, which boosts Barcelona as a tourist, congress, research, logistics and industrial city.