More than an airport

The expansion of Barcelona-El Prat Airport has become the main symbol of a new political era that Salvador Illa seeks to promote, based on concrete and verifiable achievements by the public. His response to the institutional paralysis experienced in recent years has been to reach institutional agreements that allow the resumption of expansion works with the aim of providing Catalonia with a global benchmark airport that strengthens its economy by enhancing international connections. The airport expansion thus represents a political shift in Catalonia, where the essential goal is no longer to obstruct strategic projects for the country's social and economic development from institutions but to make them possible, assuming the political and electoral costs that this entails.

The success of political parties and social organizations in halting the airport expansion had consolidated in the collective imagination the metaphor of a Catalonia that can't take off, a disconnected Catalonia; metaphors fueled by the paradox of those who fantasized about an airport from which Catalans could take off to any destination in the world while, at the same time, restricting the landing of tourist flights. The indefinite blockage of infrastructure development ceased to be a mere political setback and became a reality with material, cultural, and psychological consequences.

One of Illa's most significant achievements has been unlocking and promoting the expansion of Barcelona airport.

On August 8th, it will be one year since Salvador Illa was sworn in as president of the Generalitat (Catalan government). One of his most significant achievements has been precisely unblocking and promoting the expansion of Barcelona airport. With this decision, he has reestablished a political hierarchy in which the important thing is not being right, but doing the right thing. Those who claim that Salvador Illa lacks a project for Catalonia—precisely at a time when the Spanish government is experiencing a major crisis due to several corruption cases—should note that the path initiated in this term is based on integrating the maximum number of political sensibilities into the resolution of pending conflicts, without allowing the electoral situation, emotions, or citizen demonstrations to dictate the national objectives that must be achieved.

Read also National interest Felix Riera

The expansion of the Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport, promoted by Salvador Illa, evokes to some extent the values ​​defended by President Tarradellas: the conviction that without a Catalonia that works and produces, the future cannot be built.