Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Great shops, clean and spacious, good signs |
| Disadvantages: |
Can be slow to queue for things . . . |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Barcelona – capital of the Spanish province of Catalonia and one of the airports serving the popular Costa Brava as well as the bustling, historic city of Barcelona. Have flown into Barcelona roughly 5 times in the last copula of years and have had no serious problems or complaints with it.
Prat de Llobregat airport has three large, spacious terminals – A (long haul and EU destinations - most of the budget airlines fly into here), B (EU destinations – most of the budget airlines fly into here) and C (mainly domestic flights) A and B are next door to one another whilst C is a short shuttle bus journey away. Most of the car hire companies can be found in terminal B, in my experience.
Each terminal has all the usual facilities – check in desks, cafes, tourist information, bureau de change, car hire and toilets as well as several car stands and people offering to cling film your luggage to protect it! The airport is very easy to find your way around with helpful signs up everywhere in Catalan, English and Spanish and helpful staff who mainly seemed to speak good English. The checking in process certainly isn’t bad, but can at times appear to run with Spanish efficiency and things may not move as fast as you might like them to – particularly at peak times. So don’t get there late!
Security is high as at any airport is these days, but in my experience efficient and courteous, so no major problems there. Post check in and security, Barcelona Airport boasts a superb array of shops with prices guaranteed to match those in the city centre in Barcelona (although how you are supposed to check at this point, I’m not quite sure!). Providing you’re not flying too late (I once flew out on an 11pm flight and pretty much everything was closed) you will be treated to a fine shopping experience, selling everything you could expect to buy in any normal shopping centre from toys to clothes to shoes to electronics well as all the normal duty free booze, fags and perfumes.
All the departure lounges also have pretty decent cafes and plenty of seating – even when the flights are delayed.
The airport is remarkably easy to get to, being only approx 8 miles from the city centre. A taxi costs +/- £15 (might be more now with the current exchange rate) . There is also a train station at the airport which costs roughly £3 from the main stations in Barcelona and the Aerobus which runs about every 10-15 minutes between the city centre (Plaza Catalunya) to the airport for approx £2. Not bad really.
Barcelona is a beautiful city and the surrounding area has loads to offer people of all ages. With budget airlines now offering cheap flights there all year round, it’s certainly worth a visit. One of my favorite things about arriving at Barcelona airport if the sight of the palm trees outside the airport – a very nice touch.
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