Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Close to the city, good links, clean, good facilities |
| Disadvantages: |
Perhaps not as efficient as it could be ! |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
That’s the phrase that greets you when landing at Prat de Llobregat airport in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia. The primary language for all signs is Catalan, as the region enjoys the autonomy granted by the government to reassert the sense of national identity that was deliberately eroded during the authoritarian rule of General Franco. No need to panic though, because every sign also has an English translation, with the Spanish information relegated to third place.
I flew to Barcelona with Easyjet last weekend (a flying visit with the primary aim of seeing a match at the Nou Camp, if you hadn’t already guessed!), and hazy memories of a chaotic time at Alicante airport many years ago combined with some vague stereotyping of the Spanish way of life to make me expect a jumbled mess of an airport. However, the terminals at Barcelona are clean, uncluttered and pretty spacious, even if queues do seem to move at a somewhat slower pace than is the case at Heathrow and Frankfurt!
The airport is divided into 3 terminals (A, B and C) – A and B are right next door to one another, while C is a couple of minutes away by bus. I flew into Terminal A, which is home to the budget airlines like Go and Easyjet, and most short-haul European flights, while British Airways and Iberia are based in Terminal B. When you land, all exits are clearly signposted, and the size of the airport means that baggage reclaim and passport control are all close at hand. The baggage carousels are beginning to show their age, however, as they are a bit too small and too close to the ground, meaning that bags sometimes fall off into a dark and dusty corner as they shudder and jolt around the corner.
When you come back to check in for the flight home, make sure you leave plenty of time to complete all the formalities, as even with a large queue building and time ticking on, there was no great rush to open a second desk or get people checked in a bit quicker, so it was a good job we arrived 2 hours before our flight was due to leave. The security checks here as you go airside are as stringent as at any other airport, which is to be expected and is also no bad thing!
There is a decent selection of shops and facilities in the terminal building, with cashpoints, coffee and snack bars, and the usual array of post-boxes, paper shops and gift shops – but if you need to buy a stamp, the only place that sells them is in Terminal B, and the terminal map displays seem to be a little out of date. Once you are airside, there is an excellent selection of duty free shops to choose from, including perfumes, clothing, gourmet food and wine, an official FC Barcelona fan shop for the football fanatic, and a good old-style duty free shop with stacks of cigarettes and alcohol!
The airport is easily accessible by road, and is linked to the city centre by the Aerobus service. This runs every 10-15 minutes from Terminal A to Plaza Catalunya, calling at the other 2 terminals and the Sants railway station, and costs €3.30 for a single fare. There is also a railway station in Terminal B, which runs a service to Sants station, where you can connect with a multitude of bus and train services.
All in all, there is very little to complain about with Barcelona airport – the buildings are clean, the facilities are very good, especially once you have checked in and gone airside, and the connections to the city are excellent. The number of flights is increasing all the time, as the British budget operators have based themselves here now, as well as some of the smaller Spanish operators, such as Iberworld. This means that flights to Barcelona are becoming cheaper and cheaper, and Prat de Llobregat is developing into an important international hub. And you can shelter from the sun in the shade of a palm tree, even in mid-January! You can’t beat that...
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