Presently, the Chamber is one of the institutions that best represents the civil Catalan society and a first order reference point for the socioeconomic scope of the country. The Chamber of Barcelona works to improve company's results by twofold. On one side, it offers services that businesses can use individually and, on the other, it carries out general interest actions to promote the country's economic and managerial activities, which indirectly favour each company.

The aim of corporate actions is to promote the economy and defend the general interests of our companies.

B) WHAT WAS THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE'S PROPOSAL ?

Features:

• In less than one year a runway parallel to the present main runway would be built at a distance of only 400 meters. This would allow for the airport's capacity to increase within 5 to 7 years in order to complete the rest of the construction.
• These two runways would operate connected to the present terminal without affecting at all the two protected lagoons
• During the following years, the construction would include the filling in of the beach up to the point in which the Llobregat river outlet will remain once the river is diverted. This would mean reclaiming between 450 and 500 meters from the sea.
• On the strip of land reclaimed from the sea, two more parallel runways would be built 2,000 meters away from the two previous runways and with 400 meters separating them.
• Runways would be reserved for landings and others for takeoffs
• In the central zone between the two pairs of runways new terminals for travellers would be built. These would be circular to reduce the movement of traffic
• The terminals would be connected to a high-speed train ('AVE'), the subway and a highway
  

Advantages:

• Capacity for 120 flights per hour
• It could reach up to 65 million travellers in 2010 and up to 115 million travellers in 2020
• Capacity for all the cargo the territory could generate
• The Barcelona airport could become the Mediterranean's number one airport and one of the airports with the largest capacity in Europe
• It would be the number one airport in Europe in regards to its capacity for night flights.
• The airport would become a great economic motor offering 24-hour services for cargoes, since it would join the expansion of the port terminal, the new train tracks of European width and new highways. This would make Barcelona a true nucleus for all classes of transportation.

Disadvantages:

• The project required that the present project be abandoned because both were incompatible
• It would cost more than 2,100 million euros (twice the cost of the master plan in process))
• The urban re-assessment of the protected areas would have to be approved by the European Union and this requirement would entail a period of 4 to 5 years. Moreover, it would require a high level of agreement among the affected institutions.
• The Chamber considered the two lagoons to be artificial, as a consequence of the extraction of arid land; however, it did not propose their destruction but rather their RELOCATION:

- The Remolar reserve would be moved more to the south (closer to Gavà Mar)
- The Ricarda reserve would be reduced.

Normand Ashford, an expert aeronautic engineer, enthusiastically complimented this project and affirmed that it had great chances of being financed with European funds, especially for its night operations capacity.

- Propuesta de Normand Ashford

This project was going to be made public on Wednesday June 2nd, 1999, but the act was canceled less that 12 hours before, after a phone call from the then president of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, to the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Antoni Negre.

Pujol asked that the proposal not be made public before June 13, 1999 (the date of the municipal elections), so that it could not be used by the opposition for vote-catching purposes.

The president of the Chamber of Commerce agreed but sent copies to the administrations involved and to other social organizations related with the airport and on Sunday June 6, 1999, the main newspapers published the Chamber of Commerce's proposal.

C) WHICH WERE THE REACTIONS TO THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE'S PROPOSAL ?

	Francisco Cal Pardo President of AENA from November 18, 1998, until July 21, 1999 (20 months) His exact words were "the project is ideal from an aeronautic point of view" though he believed that it could not be carried out because of the depth of the seabed.

	Albert Vilalta i Gonzàlez Secretary of the Environment of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia (91-96) (CiU) Secretary of State for Infrastructures (1998-2000) (Government of PP) President of Tramvia Metropolità, SA (2001-) He rejected this proposal arguing that he did not want to re-open the debate of the expansion of El Prat.

	Julia García-Valdecasas Delegate of the Central Government in Catalonia (1996-2003) (Government of PP) Minister of Public Administrations (2003-2004) (Government of PP) She declared the day after the publication of this proposal that it had to be shelved.

D) THE VIEW FROM GAVÀ MAR

• The runway situated at 400 meters from the main runway would be TERRIBLE and the main runway's use would be just as bad as it is at the present time
• The elapsed period of time until the construction of the two runways over the sea would have been a TORTURE, even worse than it is at the present time
• The two runways that would have been built reclaiming the land from the sea would have provoked a lesser impact than the present third runway
• Unknown is the impact of the land reclaimed from the sea on Gavà Mar beach