The president of the Port of Barcelona, Lluís Salvadó, has announced that the Barcelona North dock, located near the World Trade Center, will cease its cruise ship activity in October.
The last cruise ship will depart from the cruise terminal located at this pier on October 2nd, after the ferry terminal located a few meters away ceased operations in April, where the Emirates Team New Zealand, the defending team of the America's Cup sailing regatta that will take place from August 2024, is now based.
On October 22, the area will be "freed from port commercial activity" permanently, after decades dedicated to this purpose.
“This is not an arbitrary decision. Years of work have gone into preparing the conditions for this to happen: we will close the emissions point closest to the public, and we already have a specific date to make this qualitative leap,” Salvadó stated.
These 600 meters of dock will be "opened" to the public, 100 of them before the America's Cup and another 500 after this competition takes place.
In 2018, the municipal government of the Catalan capital and the port authority agreed to regulate cruise ship activity, a frequent source of controversy due to increasing tourist pressure.
With that agreement, the number of cruise terminals in Barcelona was limited to seven, and it was decided that all of them would be located on the Adosado dock, which means moving those closest to the center further south.
This move is also part of the "opening" of Port Vell to the public, accelerated precisely by the America's Cup, and for which there is an investment of approximately 120 million, half public and half private.
In contrast, the terminal located on the south side of the Barcelona dock will continue to operate for cruise ships for the time being, although the aforementioned 2018 agreement also foresees that it will eventually close.
Of the seven terminals to be located on the Adosado dock, five are already underway, three managed by Global Ports Holding and two by Carnival, the sixth will be occupied by MSC from 2024 and the seventh (with the bidding process resumed a month ago, after being suspended in March) will be awarded at the end of the year, according to Salvadó's forecasts.
In 2023, despite registering 8% more cruise passenger movements in the first half of the year than in the same period of 2019, the port expects approximately the same record figure as in the last year before the pandemic: 3.1 million.
The planned stopovers for this year and next are the same as then (around 800) and Salvadó explained that the intention is to "stabilize" this number, and not increase it, from 2025 onwards.
At the same time, their goal is to "introduce more and more homeport cruises," that is, those that start their route in Barcelona and do not make a single stop in the city for just a few hours.
He emphasized that the Port of Barcelona is a “leader” in this regard and is “light years ahead” of its competitors. Since taking office last December, Salvadó has promoted the Cruise Sustainability Council, which brings together administrations, entities, and organizations related to this sector in order to address the “negative externalities” that cruise tourism, “like any other economic activity,” can have. In this respect, he acknowledged the “willingness” and “eagerness to work” he has observed in the new Barcelona City Council.
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