<![CDATA[Ara in English - enlargement]]> 10 <![CDATA[Airport expansion, a step against the planet]]>

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.

]]> <![CDATA[El Prat: 'low cost' expansion]]>

There is already an airport regulation document (DORA) for 2022-2026, since the central government has not waited to transfer airports to Catalonia to decide the investments – and it does not include the expansion of El Prat airport. This, nevertheless, does not make a low-cost expansion impossible. That is, not spending a little over €300m to extend the short runway over La Ricarda lagoon (a minor part, by the way, of the famous €1.7bn).

]]> <![CDATA[Fleeing El Prat]]> It is surprising the speed at which the ministry and airport controller Aena have left the table when they had to negotiate the details of the master plan to expand El Prat airport. We already knew the devil is in the detail, and it is no surprise that a negotiation that made a positive investment for growth and compliance compatible with the conditions of environmental protection would be very complicated. In fact, the squaring of the circle is so complex that supporters and opponents of the extension coexist within the governments of both the Generalitat and the central government. In fact, whereas some Catalan ministers might have been tempted to demonstrate against the extension next Sunday, it is no less significant that this Thursday the vice-president of Unidas Podemos, Yolanda Díaz, plans to visit the protected area of La Ricarda, accompanied by the mayor of Barcelona, who is totally opposed to the extension. In one government and the other the approval of the project was expected to be intense and it seems that there has been a rush to allocate the blame for the failure. The expansion of El Prat called for a more transparent and honest debate: with documents on the table and in the public realm, without linguistic traps that tried to avoid clarity and with specifics about the ecological impact and what compensation would be provided. Also, we needed to know what guarantees the airport had of becoming an international airline hub and for what kind of tourism and economic model. Unfortunately, the option of preferring to act offended was preferred.

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