The city councils that surround the Barcelona Airport exploded this Friday in criticism of the environmental impact and meager investment contemplated in the base document that should guide the first years of the project for the expansion of the infrastructure. The Government was also publicly opposed after the municipal anger.
For the Barcelona City Council, the Airport Regulation Document (Dora) that Aena presented this Friday to the Catalan Airport Coordination Commission is an “environmental attack”, and accused the Catalan Government of having “lied”, by ensuring that the works in this infrastructure they would not be done at the cost of damaging the ecosystem.
And it is that Aena plans to expand the flight capacity of the Barcelona-El Prat Airport by extending the third runway to the east, which would affect the La Ricarda lagoon, an area protected by the European Natura 2000 network.
In statements to TV3 collected by Efe , the Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning of the Barcelona City Council, Janet Sanz, warned that it is “an environmental attack on a very important metropolitan area”, committed with a full expansion project, in her opinion , of “lies, opacity and secrecy”.
Along the same lines, the mayor of El Prat de Llobregat, Lluís Mijoler, accused the Government of lying because Aena contemplates in Dora affecting the Natura 2000 network with the “claim is to destroy La Ricarda in a clear and obvious way”, and criticized that the compensatory measures of the affectation and the lands that would have to be acquired “are not specified.”
He also reproached that, according to the Dora document, strong investment will not arrive until 2027 (the estimated calendar ends in 2031), since from 2022 to 2027 only 364 million will be allocated, of which 92 are part of the expansion.
It affected that only this investment of about 300 million by Aena is made and that nowhere is the investment of 1,700 million euros announced previously: “The Government does not put a single euro,” he added.
Judicial way
From the En Comú Podem party, contrary to the enlargement and with initiatives in this line in the Congress of Deputies, they contemplate taking the issue to court.
For his part, the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, used social networks to demand explanations and a rectification of the Dora de Aena because it harms the protected area of La Ricarda.
“Every step that is made must include a consensus commitment. Preserving natural spaces is not an option, it is a non-negotiable obligation,” said Aragonès in a note on Twitter collected by Europa Press .