The person responsible for the false bomb threat that caused an emergency landing at El Prat airport on Thursday has yet to be identified, nor have the potential consequences been clarified. However, legal experts consulted by ARA agree that the passenger could face charges for public disorder. Cases involving false bomb threats are not frequent, but in this state there has been at least one acquittal and one conviction in cases that, while not exactly the same, could serve as precedents for a potential legal proceeding regarding the events on the Turkish Airlines plane.

El Prat Airport recorded its best August ever with 5,673,319 passengers, a 4.8% increase compared to the same month in 2024, according to a report by airport operator Aena this Friday. The Catalan airport has set eleven consecutive months of monthly records and has seen four consecutive months with more than five million users. After having surpassed the figure for the first timethe 55 million passengersLast year, pushing the limits of its theoretical capacity, the facility continues to grow.

The tender hasn't been open for ten years, and it won't be again for another decade. Airport operator Aena presented this Tuesday the new macro-catering competition for El Prat Airport, through which 98% of the infrastructure's gastronomic offering will be selected for the next 8 to 12 years. This tender includes a total of 49 units organized into 29 lots, equivalent to a total surface area of ​​20,188 square meters, 30% more than the previous edition.

We didn't have public services and infrastructure sufficiently stressed by the Catalonia of 8 million people and the tourist overcrowding that the Catalan government appears before Parliament to tell us we must prepare for 10 million. Demographic studies say so. It seems the Catalan executive doesn't consider an alternative: demographic studies say so, period. As if demographic studies, and not public policies, decided a country's population.

As many have done at some point, a person hired a company that picks up your car at El Prat Airport and parks it for you while you're traveling. In this case, they left a Ford Mustang, and the company particularly liked it. A knife in Martorell. The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) linked that car to the theft, and evidently, the owner said he didn't know what had happened, that in theory the vehicle should have been parked at the airport. Another example: a customer who, when he returned to pick up the car that had been parked for him, saw that it had 500 kilometers more than when he had left it. High prices for parking your car while you're traveling, but they operate without a license or quality controls. And this Tuesday, a police offensive began to curb their activity.

While political tensions are growing in Spain, amidst the alleged cases of corruption surrounding the PSOEIn Catalonia, the Government announced on June 10, the El Prat airport expansion project, after reaching an agreement with Aena and the Ministry of Transport. The executive explained an agreement to the affected municipalities, drawing considerable criticism from El Prat de Llobregat and Castelldefels. The project also affects Ricarda (now also Remolar), as it did in 2021, and has prompted the ERC (Republican Workers' Party), Comuns (Communist Party), and the CUP (Cup) to speak out.This Saturday there was a demonstration in Barcelona—. But not only that: although Junts –with nuances– and the PP have always endorsed it at the national level, their local sections in El Prat and Castelldefels –where the PP governs with Manuel Reyes– also say No on the expansion of El Prat Airport.

According to the City Police, approximately 800 people gathered this Saturday morning in Barcelona's Plaça Sant Jaume to protest against the expansion of El Prat Airport. Organized by the Zeroport platform, the activists created a human mural on the square under the slogan "No to the expansion" and launched paper airplanes in protest of the Catalan government-Catalan pact.

The debate over whether or not it is necessary to expand El Prat Airport has been rather simplistic and has been characterized by conflicting and bitter positions based on political party alignment. For some, it has been a symbol of an outdated developmental model, and for others, a condition sine qua non For being in the world and somewhat too focused on associating growth with well-being, something that doesn't have an exact correlation. In fact, the issue isn't really—or at least shouldn't be—"growth." per se and linked to increasing tourist flow, but rather the extension of a runway that makes it possible for intercontinental flights to land and take off, so we don't have to be secondary in global communication networks. If the economic focus is on reindustrialization and a knowledge-based economy, there is no doubt not only about its benefits but also about its imperative need to be attractive to the global economy. However, increasing flights to more Chinese or American cities and their frequency does not mean that those who come from now on will only be CEOs of large companies, university researchers, or engineers dedicated to AI. As seems obvious, everyone who wants to come will come and, therefore, many more tourists, with the negative implications this entails in a city already absolutely saturated with visitors. I am aware that actions are being taken by the Generalitat (Generalitat) and Barcelona City Council to address a complex issue that has ended up turning Barcelona into an uninhabitable theme park and economically unsustainable for its citizens. Along the way, culture and personality are also left behind, without addressing the issue of the environmental unsustainability of the phenomenon at this point in the film. As a means of economic development, tourism is pitiful: a large portion of spending goes to airlines, technology platforms, and multinational hotel companies based abroad. Its intensive use of low-skilled and poorly paid labor could also be discussed. The average salary in the hospitality industry, which accompanies the tourism sector, is €17,000, while in industry it is over €40,000. Precariousness, a great deal of precariousness, and too many negative externalities.

The expansion of Barcelona Airport announced last week has been accompanied by a flood of information and debate that has caused us to lose sight of certain elements that cannot be forgotten. The ones I have detected are these:

The growth of El Prat Airport in figures over the last few decades is undeniable. Last year, it surpassed 55 million passengers for the first time, practically double the 27.4 million that passed through in 2009, when the then Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, inaugurated the new Terminal 1, completing the latest major expansion of the facilities. "It's a success story," summarizes Pere Suau-Sanchez, professor of air transport management at the UOC. "The airport has grown spectacularly; we're dying of success," remarks Xavier Fageda, professor at the University of Barcelona and infrastructure expert.

"Today all the people of El Prat de Llobregat gathered to say No at the airport, but this is just the beginning. We will return when necessary and until necessary." This was the closing of a protest that marched through the streets of El Prat for an hour and a half to protest against the airport expansion this Saturday at noon. The demonstration, called by the neighborhood organization Ni un Pam de Terra and attended by more than 1,000 people, has been going on for days. the project despite opposition from ERC and Comuns.

On Monday I participated in the program In the mornings from TV3 to justify the expansion of El Prat Airport. A friend with an exceptionally well-arranged mind sent me a message saying he was surprised by my intervention and concluding that he feared that "this will end as always, with Aena and the elites doing the only thing they know how to do: attracting tourists."

"Juanito, what's going on at the airport?" Joan Alfred Vives, deputy inspector of the Mossos d'Esquadra and head of the Regional Airport Security Area, received a call one Sunday in September. On the other end of the phone was the director of the police, Josep Lluís Trapero. That day, the ARA had published a report about the crime situation at the airport, where property crimes, especially theft, had increased tenfold in a decade. The news spread quickly within the Ministry of the Interior, and its leaders were asking the same question that Trapero would ask minutes later to the airport's top police official: "What's going on at El Prat?"

Ornithologist and naturalist Jordi Sargatal (Figueres, 1957) actively participated in the campaign to defend the Empordà wetlands in the 1980s. Now, as Secretary of Ecological Transition for Salvador Illa's administration, he was one of the members of the technical committee that yesterday presented the proposed expansion of El Prat Airport, which will affect the protected natural areas of Ricarda and Remolar. He spoke to ARA to explain how the environmental impact of this €3.2 billion investment will be managed.

New warning from Brussels to Spain and the government of Salvador Illa for the expansion of El Prat airport. The day after the proposal presented by the President of the Generalitat (Catalan government) regarding the future of the infrastructure, the European Commission issued a statement on Wednesday warning the State that it "must take the necessary measures to prevent further deterioration of the Natura 2000 area in the Llobregat Delta as a result of the implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects," such as the "international" one.

It was supposed to be finalized at the beginning of the year, but the proposal to expand El Prat Airport by the President of the Generalitat (Catalan government), Salvador Illa, has been delayed until this Tuesday, at the beginning of summer. After months of meetings of the technical committee—which was relaunched this term after the first failed attempt in 2021—it's finally clear what future the new government wants for the infrastructure. These are the technical details of the solution.

The expansion of the airport and its impact on the natural ecosystems of the Llobregat Delta is already beginning to resemble the Guadiana River—now I leave, now I disappear. A committee of experts has decided that the best option is, instead of destroying a piece of Ricarda, to do a two-for-one: now we'll steal a little piece from the Remolar River. And somewhere we'll build a new reservoir to compensate for this destruction.

El Prat Airport opened the 21st century with nearly 20 million passengers, and last year reached 55 million, consolidating its position as one of the largest in Europe. This milestone was possible thanks to the expansion approved in 1999 and carried out throughout the first decade of the century, which included the construction of the sea runway and Terminal 1. Now, the airport has reached its maximum capacity, and the government of President Salvador Illa has just approved the expansion proposed by Aena for six years.

Remco, 43, walks through Terminal T2 of El Prat Airport looking for food in the bins. After a round, he sits next to a column, somewhat hidden from the streams of passengers heading to the boarding area. He is German and speaks little Spanish. He has been sleeping at the airport for some time, and admits that lately they have increased controls at the entrances after dark. "The solution is to spend most of the day inside," he explains. However, he says the security guards and the police treat him well, and that he "understands" that they sometimes take him outside for a few hours. He also admits that there are fewer people sleeping at the airport lately, although he denies persecution by the authorities. Practically every day, he explains, he is able to continue sleeping at El Prat.

On paper, he was in Barcelona for tourism. He had just arrived from a flight from Brazil and was traveling alone, despite having serious mobility issues: he was using an electric wheelchair. At El Prat Airport, when the National Police officers asked him why he had chosen Barcelona, ​​he hesitated. He became nervous and doubtful, and evaded the issue by bringing up a new, even more suspicious one: his electric wheelchair wouldn't work; it had to be moved manually, because he had had problems during the flight. The wheelchair wouldn't work because it had no battery: inside the boxes that should have contained gears and cables, there was actually cocaine.