L9: The great work of Catalan engineering finally reaches the airport

As of today at 3 pm, anyone who wants to reach Terminal 1 by public transport can do so via metro. Until the Renfe shuttle train service is up and running, the only way to reach the new terminal --inaugurated in 2009-- without driving or taking a cab was to take a Renfe Rodalies train to Terminal 2 and then a free shuttle bus from there to the T1. The brand new L9 will partially resolve this transportation deficit, but bearing in mind the cost and the time it takes to get to the airport, the new metro will not be a real competitor for the Aerobus for anyone traveling to the El Prat airport from the center of Barcelona. It takes 32 minutes to get to the airport from the Zona Universitària underground station, and from the city center the trip can take over an hour because a change of train is necessary.

The official inauguration of the L9 will be this morning at about 10 am with a trip by Carles Puigdemont, President of the Generalitat, and all of the official delegation, from Zona Universitària station to the T1. The event will have all of the solemnity of a major government milestone, as it has invested €2.899 billion of its own money despite the austerity policies current in place. Today, however, not only will the value of the investment become evident, but it will also be a tribute to Catalan engineering, which has achieved such a feat with this project that it is now being copied around the world.

Cutting-edge technology

The solutions devised for drilling through the irregular and variable underground layers of Barcelona, l´Hospitalet, and El Prat employed previously untried techniques. Indeed, the two main tunneling machines had to be custom made, and involved leading-edge technology for that time. "This L9 is a great success for Catalan engineering; all of the technicians and engineers that participated are now working around the world with the same system for construction of underground trains", proudly explained Jordi Jubany, former director of Geology and Subterranean Works of the Generalitat, and the only Territory department worker who was still employed by the Catalan ministry since the start of the L9 project in 1999, and who just retired on December 11, 2015.

Jubany, who looks on the inauguration today with the love of one who is watching a child born, spoke with ARA about how it all began: "Back in 1999 was the first time that the Generalitat proposed a major metro project (the basic network was built before 1980), as all that they had done to that point had been short extensions. The L2 isn´t a project wholly of the Generalitat either, as half of its infrastructure was done in the mid-70s, but was on hold and was recovered for the 1992 Olympic games in the city".

To finish the L9, the Zona Franca branch and the central section still remain. In this final section there are only 4 kilometers remaining to excavate-- between Lesseps and Manuel Girona. According to Jubany, the remaining stretches could take one year to complete.

The Spanish Minister's tantrum

The Catalan authorities had not planned to invite any member of the Spanish government to today´s inauguration, as all of the L9 had been paid for exclusively with money from Generalitat’s budget. When the Development Minister, Ana Pastor, learned on Wednesday that the Catalan government had invited Sonia Corrochano, director of the El Prat airport --which belongs to Aena and, as such, to the Spanish government-- and not her, she phoned demanding to be invited. The Catalan protocol office yesterday extended the invitation to Pastor, but in spite of this the minister said publicly, playing the victim, that the Generalitat had banned her. This resulted in the Development Ministry prohibiting TV3 (Catalonia’s public TV network) from broadcasting the evening news from the airport, although they lifted the ban at the last minute. In addition, late in the day Pastor declined the invitation, and will be represented today by her deputy, Julio Gómez-Pomar, the Spanish Secretary of State for Infrastructures.