After Aena, the public airport operator, denied having noted any important impact from the Catalan crisis on air traffic two weeks ago, today, as every month, statistics of the state's airports have been released and, although Barcelona-El Prat hasn't seen more growth than Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas this month, it has grown more year-on-year in terms of the numbers for the period January to October: Barcelona has grown 7.3% on 2016 to 40,895,340 passengers, Madrid only 5.9% to 44,958,134 passengers.
This means that Barcelona has won 268,339 more new passengers year-on-year than Madrid, even though el Prat has grown less this October than Madrid 3.9% (to 4,174,301 passengers) compared to 4.6%
As noted, Madrid has this month seen 4,174,301 passengers (compared to 4,018,769 the same month in 2016), whilst the Spanish capital had 4,725,994 (after 4,517,156 in 2016).
October thus becomes one of only three of the 10 months we've had of 2017 so far in which Madrid has grown more than Barcelona. Although neither airport has grown as much by this point as they had last year, history is repeated in another way: El Prat's overall growth rate is again higher than Barajas'.
More operations and goods
In terms of operations, meanwhile, El Prat airport clearly beats Barajas in terms of growth, in other words, in terms of flights which arrive and depart. The same thing is true of goods.
Comparing Octobers, whilst Madrid has increased operations 3.7%, Barcelona has grown by 7%. As for the first ten months of the year, the Spanish capital has only seen 2.8% more operations compared with 2016, whilst the Catalan capital has seen 4.8% more.
Turning to goods, Barcelona has grown 16.3% year-on-year, compared to Madrid's 13.1%. The growth over the first ten months of the years is even stronger, 17.8% for Barcelona, 13.5% for Madrid.
For the moment, therefore, and as said by Jaime García-Legaz, Aena's new president and CEO, it doesn't seem that, unlike Íñigo de la Serna, Spain's Public Works minister, said, transport has stagnated. Air traffic at least keeps growing month by month.