The Port of Barcelona has said goodbye to the last cruise ship that will operate at the Barcelona Nord dock, located in the World Trade Center, and will move all cruise activity to the Adossat dock.
With the departure of the World Navigator cruise ship, from the Mystic Cruises shipping company, the Port of Barcelona Nord has ended its operations, moving some 340 annual cruise and ferry calls to the Adossat dock, since the Baleària services to the Balearic Islands were moved to Adossat last April.
The closure of the Barcelona Nord dock to cruise and ferry operations is a further step by the Port of Barcelona in fulfilling the commitments it made in 2018 with the City Council to move cruise activity away from urban areas and make it more sustainable.
At the farewell ceremony for the last cruise ship to dock at the Barcelona Nord pier, the
president of the Port of Barcelona, Lluís Salvadó, emphasized that “today is a historic day because cruise ships and ferries will no longer be seen at this pier, an area that the Port of Barcelona will open to the city and make available to all citizens once the 37th edition of the America's Cup concludes next autumn.”
Lluís Salvadó recalled that “the closure of the Barcelona Nord dock to cruise ship operations is a further step towards fulfilling the agreement signed in 2018 with the Barcelona City Council to eliminate the negative externalities that this activity may produce for citizens. And it is a clear demonstration that the Port of Barcelona is complying with the agreement.”
Prior actions
However, this is not the first step the Port of Barcelona has taken in this direction. Back in 2018, when the agreement with the City Council was signed, the Port closed the cruise terminal located in Maremagnum, reducing the number of operational terminals from eight to seven. That same year, the Port stopped accepting cruise ship operations outside of its terminals, limiting the number of calls to one ship per terminal.
During this time, the Port of Barcelona has continued to encourage the arrival of the most modern cruise ships in the world fleet, more sustainable ships that, in many cases, use
transitional fuels such as LNG, significantly reducing emissions from this traffic.
The Port of Barcelona has already begun making investments to electrify the Adossat dock, which will allow ships to eliminate their emissions while in port.
In addition to reducing emissions and immissions from ships, this movement of traffic from the World Trade Center area to Adossat will allow the opening of the Barcelona Nord dock to the public, freeing up 630 meters of dock line and providing the city with more than 13,600 square meters of new public spaces.
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