Transport warns that other European airports will attract the traffic that El Prat does not assume

MADRID, 19 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Secretary General of Air and Maritime Transport, Benito Núñez, has advocated the expansion of Barcelona's El Prat airport, warning that the alternative is for other airports such as the French or Italian ones to end up assuming the traffic that Spain does not accommodate.

During his speech at the IX National Congress of Civil Engineering of the College of Civil, Canal and Port Engineers, Núñez defended that the Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat airport should attract long-haul flights and become an international hub.

"The alternative is that these operations end up being carried out in some other airport, French or Italian, and do so with an action that allows, at the same time, to renaturalize the natural spaces that surround it and compensate for the possible impact on a protected space," he said. justified.

In any case, he regretted that this decision does not depend exclusively on the Ministry of Transport, which is why he trusts that the recently established technical commission between the Government and the Generalitat will find the necessary consensus for the development of an infrastructure that he considers "essential" for Catalonia and for Spain.

On the other hand, it has celebrated the expansion of the Adolfo Suárez-Madrid-Barajas airport, with a planned investment of 2.4 billion euros and which will be the largest in recent decades in terms of airport infrastructure.

"This is an expansion that will strengthen the hub with Latin America and promote connections with Asia-Pacific, with new routes and airlines and that will increase the airport's capacity to 90 million passengers per year, creating numerous jobs, both direct and indirect," he noted.

The president of Adif, Ángel Contreras, also participated in the event, who has valued being the main public investor in Spain, after reaching a new project execution record in 2023, with more than 3.5 billion euros, 46% more than in 2019, to which another 1,000 million are added in the conservation and maintenance of the network.

For his part, the president of Ineco, Sergio Vázquez, has highlighted that Spain will reach a state of "hypermaturity" in the engineering sector by 2027, with a "very high" level of quality in infrastructure. "We have to be really realistic and think that there is an already limited range of new construction infrastructure," he added.