The president’ Pere Aragones spoke for the first time this Monday on the proposal to extend the airport of Barcelona with a new track into the sea, one mile from the coast, which would mean an investment of about 2,100 million. The project, a private initiative, proposes building a 3,400-meter long runway with capacity for long-haul aircraft on 10-meter-high pylons and without a satellite terminal, which would be connected to the existing ones with a platform.
The Republican has assured that “it is not the proposal that the Government defends”, but has opted to “analyze it” within the framework of the technical commission that ERC and PSC agreed to together with the budgets of the Generalitat, although he sees it as “debatable”. “It will be one more proposal. If it is seen that they have technical feasibility, it will be deepened and if not,” he has sentenced in an interview in Rac1. However, Aragonès has insisted that the modernization of the aerodrome has to go through three conditions: that intercontinental connections improve, that the affectation on protected areas, biodiversity and the comfort of the neighbors are minimal and that the management of the airport is done from Catalonia.
The position of the ‘president’ has nuances with respect to that of his party, which is more forceful against this proposal. Republican spokeswoman marta vilalta, has defended that Barcelona can be an intercontinental ‘hub’ without the need to expand any track “neither towards La Ricarda nor towards the sea”. In this sense, he has emphasized that “current infrastructures must be optimized and the environment preserved”, although, like the ‘president’, he has stressed the need to “change the governance and management model”.
For his part, he PSC He has insisted this Monday that what was agreed with the Republicans is that the airport’s capacity be increased and that the technical commission that must be set in motion, and that does not yet have a date, must serve to study the different proposals that are put on top of the table. Until now, Salvador Illa He has defended that the way for El Prat to grow has to be by extending the third track, as Aena proposes. Socialist sources practically rule out endorsing the project for the floating track on the water due to its environmental impact and its cost, more than 400 million more than the Aena project, work that is estimated to cost 1,700 million euros.
The notice of the Commons
The commons, which within the agreement for the accounts are the most belligerent against large infrastructures, have taken the opportunity to warn the ‘president’ Pere Aragonès that, depending on how he moves from now on, his government runs the risk of being remembered as the “Government of failed macroprojects”. The notice is in line with what the president of En Comú Podem dropped last week in Parliament: the legislature will last longer or shorter depending on the degree of compliance with the budget agreement that the Republicans have sealed with the Comuns for a side and with the socialists on the other.
The former insisted that the pact closed between Salvador Illa and the Government on the Hard Rock, the “modernization” of the Prat and the B-40 were a mere “declaration of intent” wrapped in euphemisms that would not materialize. But, before the new proposal on the Prat, the spokesman for Catalunya en Comú and deputy in Congress, Joan Menahas not wanted to leave room for doubt: in addition to calling it “ridiculous and pharaonic”, it has recited the history of controversial projects that the Executiu drags with the risk of ending up on deaf ears, as happened with the candidacy of the Games of Winter.
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Mena has argued that his training will not be in favor of any type of expansion because, beyond the environmental impact, there is also a tourism model that is “unsustainable”. And he has added that this debate is imposed by raising more than 2,000 million to build a track over the sea while Rodalies continues to have a loss-making operation. The Comuns ask Aragonès to “stop listening” to those who want Catalonia to be the “Qatar of the Mediterranean” and, instead, attend to the movements that are demonstrating against the impact of macro-projects and in defense of preservation enviroment. “All the macroprojects are bread for today and hunger for tomorrow”, he has sentenced.
Those who also do not see the track over the sea as viable are Citizens, who has dismissed the initiative as a “firefighter’s idea”. “What is that, one more occurrence or a new excuse for a bad payer to delay and delay and delay the work again?”, snapped the deputy Anna Grau.