The mayor of El Prat de Llobregat (Barcelona) and common candidate for re-election, Lluís Mijoler, calls for the Barcelona-El Prat Airport to have a common management model like the Port of Barcelona, since he believes that Aena lacks legitimacy to make strategic decisions for the country.
In an interview with EFE, Mijoler, who warned that the proposal to expand the third runway at the Barcelona-El Prat Airport was and is "impossible" because "Europe would not have allowed it", highlighted that Aena, being a company Listed with 49% private capital, "it is much more subject to the decisions of speculation than to the general interest".
It contrasts the airport management model -in which Aena "orders" from Madrid- with that of the Port of Barcelona, where "the territory is taken into account" and "there is a will to reach consensus". "Aena decides something from Madrid and passes the order. And if this affects you and your territory, it's your problem," complains the mayor.
Instead, it stands out that the Port of Barcelona is governed by a Board of Directors in which the General State Administration, the Generalitat, the Barcelona City Council and the El Prat City Council, unions and companies are present, while its president is chosen by the Government.
"If it is a model that works in the Port of Barcelona and the rest of the ports in Spain, why doesn't it have to work in airports?", he reiterates. Continuing with the comparison, the mayor emphasizes that the port "already has a limited space, and within its space it can expand its capacity, and it is doing so in a sustainable way."
For Mijoler, the debate on the management of the aerodrome has to be one of the first points to be addressed in the technical commission on the Catalan airport model that the Government and the PSC agreed on in the budget pact, and where it was already pointed out that the Generalitat it would have to be part of infrastructure governance.
Although he is opposed to El Prat increasing its number of flights, Mijoler is also forceful against the "deception" that the airport can only grow by lengthening the third runway and affirms that there are alternatives within its current space.
Beyond the option of increasing the frequency of flights to 90 operations per hour without the need to undertake any physical expansion but increasing the noise disturbance for residents of Castelldefels and Gavà, Mijoler maintains that capacity could also increase if the distance between takeoffs and between landings of flights or building the satellite terminal provided for in Aena's plans.
As for the natural space of the Llobregat delta, which is the subject of an infringement procedure opened by the European Commission against Spain for lack of protection, Mijoler claims the enclave as an "essential green infrastructure", in need of investment.
The Generalitat announced almost a year ago its intention to expand the Special Protection Area for Birds (ZEPA) of the Llobregat Delta from the current 935 protected hectares to 2,372 to comply with the requirements of the European Commission.
However, it has not yet approved it, a delay that Mijoler attributes to the Government's "misgivings" about doing it before the municipal elections, since it is an issue that has generated complaints between neighboring municipalities and some agricultural organizations.
To face the challenge of protecting the delta, the mayor suggests that one of the ways to guarantee more resources would be for the space to be declared a natural park.
"Collserola has ten times more resources, with a space where biodiversity is less. Everyone understands that Collserola or Montseny are a natural park. Therefore, why not consider this in the heart of the metropolitan area? This means have many more resources," he suggests.
