The climate debate for El Prat tears the seams of parties and governments

The Catalan political tradition dictates that the last week of August the machinery of the parties are put into operation with a view to the Diada that is celebrated this Saturday.

Some do it to fill the streets with pro-independence slogans.

The others try to survive this day of nationalist boiling by adopting a profile that is as discreet as possible.

La Diada as the beginning of the course of new milestones in the

process

.

But none of this is applicable this year in Catalonia.

All the conventions have been blown up with the irruption in the middle of the political board of the paralysis for five years of the process to invest 1.7 billion in the expansion of the El Prat airport.

"The ecological axis will no longer disappear from the stage" says Professor Jordi Mir

The environmental debate is mixed with that of tourism decrease, that of a change in the production model and with a way of making decisions that no longer fits into the rigid structures of the parties. And all this when the formations begin to take positions for the municipal elections of 2023 with the hope of taking over the desired mayoralty of Barcelona. Despite the efforts of the most staunch independence movement, the

procés

it has been cornered by the climate emergency, something that none of the major parties had planned on their agenda.

The Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, whose sudden opposition to the project has been key to stopping the plan, warned on Thursday: “maybe 20 years ago an investment of this type would have been celebrated, but now things have to be done in a different way ”.

These changes have misaligned governments and strained parties.

"Until now, the Catalan parties lived installed in the debate on the national axis, the

procés

, but now another axis is breaking in, the environmental and ecological one and some like ERC have it difficult to adapt", sums up Jordi Mir, professor at Pompeu Fabra University and expert in social movements.

Astrid Barrio: "They talk so much about politics that they have forgotten to talk about politics"

Two decades ago, few in Catalonia would have doubted to qualify as excellent news an investment of 1,700 million euros such as the one that the public entity Aena proposed to expand the El Prat airport with a new terminal and the extension of one of the three runways. Nor would the debate on whether an agreement of this type could be closed one summer afternoon in a ministerial office, as was the case on August 2, would not have got very far. In fact, the pact between the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, and the Catalan Vice President, Jordi Puigneró, began to generate doubts shortly after it was announced, without the project's supporters managing to set the speech on the project's advantages on the street: expand the capacity of the facility and to do so with the least possible environmental impact.

The Government experienced the first hang-up of its United Podemos partners already the day after the announcement of the pre-agreement, when the Podemos deputy Juantxo López de Uralde assured that expanding El Prat was not a "correct" decision. Shortly after, several ministers from the Podemos wing expressed themselves in similar lines and the tension increased to the point that the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, scheduled a visit to the natural space affected by the expansion even before the project was paralyzed.

More striking have been the discrepancies within the Generalitat. ERC, the Aragonès party, was against the enlargement and last spring. Afterwards, he reluctantly accepted it under the promise of taking "to a minimum" the impact on natural spaces. And, when a week ago it became clear that the impact would be significant - albeit with large compensatory measures, - it ended up getting off the hook. However, in this case, Junts, the minority party in the coalition, is in line with the central government's thesis, something unprecedented in Carles Puigdemont's party. In Barcelona City Council the differences are not minor either. Mayor Ada Colau, from Catalunya en Comú, the Catalan reference for Podemos, has experienced the project's halt as a victory. Just the opposite of its partner in government, the PSC. Nevertheless,Socialist councilors from the municipalities bordering the airport have also expressed serious misgivings about the project.

More information

• El Prat's lagoon of discord: a green lung cloistered between airplanes and the sea

• Salvador Illa opens the door to resume the investment of El Prat if the Government has a "clear attitude"

• Colau and PSC maintain that their differences over El Prat do not affect their Government pact in Barcelona

In recent years, a good part of the debate has been based on denouncing the alleged grievances towards Catalonia in terms of investment and particularly in infrastructures such as the airport, which the Catalan authorities have always wanted to turn into a

hub

that competes with Barajas. Hence the surprise of many by the success of the pressure from environmentalists and citizen movements. The diagnosis of the political scientist of the University of Valencia Astrid Barrio is that the parties have run out of tools to solve problems such as the one that faces respect for the environment and economic progress. "They have been talking about politics for so long that they have forgotten to talk about politics and to do it again they need to regain the capacity to dialogue with the society they lost because, among other things, they are frowned upon."

Hence the unforeseen maneuvers. “ERC has rectified, Junts continues with the logic that the investment stoppage is the fault of Spain; but the story no longer works ”, summarizes Professor Jordi Mir. What he is sure of is that there is no going back: "The ecological axis will not disappear from the political scene."