El Prat prepares for a summer of strikes

Long queues of passengers in Barcelona airport was one of the images of last summer, with the Spanish authorities taking a week to deploy Guardia Civil officers at passport control. This year, the new Spanish executive wants to avoid such disasters, with Madrid’s delegate to Catalonia, Teresa Cunillera, yesterday leading a meeting of all the authorities involved in managing Barcelona’s El Prat airport. The aim was to supervise the units deployed to face the challenges of the holiday season and to ensure a prompt and efficient response to any possible incidents that might occur in the airport.

Among the measures adopted to aid the circulation of passengers are 60 machines for reading passports and more staff to attend to passenger needs, Cunillera explained yesterday. The delegate insisted that so far the summer at El Prat has been a “success” and she expressed her commitment to continue working in a coordinated manner with all of the airport authorities.

The measures will soon be put to the test, as staff from the Iberia airline go on strike at the end of July and beginning of August, along with a strike of Ryanair staff on Wednesday and Thursday next week. At the same time, the threat of strikes by air traffic controllers and Vueling pilots for the moment appears to have lessened after some progress in negotiations.

In yesterday’s meeting, Cunillera was joined by the head of the airport, Sónia Corrochano, high-ranking police officers, the Catalan territory and sustainability minister, Damià Calvet, and Barcelona deputy mayor, Gerardo Pisarello, among others.

On leaving the meeting, Pisarello admitted that the aim is to avoid a repetition of “the images from previous summers”, although he also acknowledged that the threat of strikes could nevertheless cause disruption in the normal functioning of the airport.