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Save the Llobregat Delta! No to the airport expansion.
El Prat de Llobregat, España
Channel
A "Llegal defence fund" to protect the Llobregat Delta from the expansion of El Prat Airport and other urban development threats. Nature is not for sale.
Task
|
Minimum | Optimum |
|---|---|---|
|
Legal and Administrative Action
Legal fees for the lawyers leading administrative and judicial proceedings.
|
$ 7,021 | |
|
Expert Reports
Fees for the independent expert preparing technical reports in support of the legal actions.
|
$ 3,511 | |
|
Campaign Administration and Coordination
Human resources dedicated to the planning and management of the campaign, as well as support for the administrative procedures involved.
|
$ 1,755 | |
|
Technical Reports
Fees for the preparation of additional technical reports supporting the legal strategy beyond the expert witness work.
|
$ 1,872 | |
|
Additional Legal and Administrative Proceedings
Legal fees for the preparation of further legal actions and submissions.
|
$ 7,021 | |
|
Legal Expert Reports
Fees for the independent expert preparing supporting technical documentation for the legal proceedings.
|
$ 3,511 |
Infrastructure
|
Minimum | Optimum |
|---|---|---|
|
Goteo Platform Fees
Goteo service and payment management fees (10%).
|
$ 2,457 | |
|
Reward-related Costs
Shipping and delivery expenses linked to campaign rewards.
|
$ 936 | |
|
Goteo Platform Fees
Goteo service and payment management fees (10%).
|
$ 1,170 |
Material
|
Minimum | Optimum |
|---|---|---|
|
Public Awareness and Mobilisation Campaign
Human and material resources dedicated to campaign outreach and public engagement, including videos and public events, communications, social media promotion, a special issue of Agró Negre, venue hire, and the organisation of guided visits offered as campaign rewards.
|
$ 7,021 | |
| Total | $ 24,574 | $ 36,276 |
The natural and agricultural areas of the Llobregat Delta have spent decades under constant threat from major infrastructure projects and large-scale urban development. It is time to draw a clear line.
The main goal of this campaign is to raise the funds needed to strengthen the legal defence of the Llobregat Delta — especially its protected natural areas — and fight back against major threats such as the proposed expansions of Barcelona Airport and Port.
A campaign video produced specifically for this initiative will premiere during the launch event in El Prat de Llobregat, held at Cèntric Espai Cultural. The film aims not only to encourage public participation in the campaign, but also to communicate the Delta’s extraordinary environmental value in an engaging and emotionally powerful way.
To help deepen public understanding of and connection to this unique and vulnerable territory, some of the campaign rewards include guided visits to the protected areas of La Ricarda and Remolar–Filipinas: two wetlands of enormous ecological importance currently threatened by the proposed airport expansion. In addition, as part of the Social Water Summit, a webinar will explore industrial pollution in the Llobregat Delta and the importance of preserving the quality and health of its water systems, featuring speakers with extensive expertise in the field.
To further encourage public participation, raise awareness of the Delta’s rich natural and cultural heritage, and strengthen the campaign’s message against the destruction of the territory, participants will also be invited to take part in a photography competition.
Across three categories (landscape, biodiversity and protest), the competition is designed to give people the opportunity to make visible what they don't want to lose from the Delta and that is currently at risk of disappearing. Submitted photographs will be shared on DEPANA’s Instagram account, where three of the six winning images will be selected through public voting, while the remaining winners will be chosen by a jury. A video featuring a selection of the submitted photographs will also be produced.
The six winners — two for each category — will receive double recognition in DEPANA’s magazine Agró Negre, through both an interview and publication of their photographs. They will also have the opportunity to join one of the guided visits through the Delta’s protected spaces included among the campaign rewards, as well as receive a copy of biologist Marina Mir’s book on the Delta.
The campaign will culminate in a second public event at Can Batlló in Barcelona, where organisers will reinforce the campaign’s message and importance, discuss the environmental challenges facing the Delta, announce the winners of the photography competition, and continue encouraging public participation in the crowdfunding campaign.
The Llobregat Delta, located on the edge of the Barcelona metropolitan area, is one of the most densely populated and heavily industrialised regions in Spain. Decades of human pressure have taken a severe environmental toll on the territory. For this reason, among many others such as the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss, the protection of public health, and the defence of food and water sovereignty — the few remaining high-value natural spaces, such as the Delta’s wetlands, as well as its surviving agricultural land, must be protected.
We must be more determined than ever in this effort, because our collective future is at stake. Alongside public mobilisation and political pressure, urgent and decisive legal action is also essential.
DEPANA has long worked alongside grassroots organisations, local collectives and social movements defending the territory, building alliances and coordinating actions across the Delta. Many of these organisations support this campaign, recognising the crucial role that legal action plays in protecting the Delta from further destruction.
Through this campaign, DEPANA aims to raise €21,000 to:
If, for any administrative, political or legal reason, it becomes impossible or inappropriate to pursue legal action against the airport expansion, DEPANA will redirect the funds raised towards other legal and administrative actions related to defending the Llobregat Delta.
This campaign comes in response to the fact that across the Llobregat Delta, projects of every kind and scale are threatening the integrity of its protected natural and agricultural areas. The most significant is the proposed expansion of Barcelona Airport, both because of its scale and because of the imminent approval of the administrative and urban planning measures expected to make it possible. But the airport is far from the only threat. New road and rail access projects linked to the Port of Barcelona, the illegal spread of industrial-scale greenhouses across agricultural land, and large-scale urban development schemes are all placing increasing pressure on the Delta.
The campaign is aimed at all those — individuals, organisations and institutions alike — who see the Llobregat Delta as a living natural treasure that cannot withstand any further degradation. Its value lies not only in its biodiversity, but also in everything it provides: water and temperature regulation, CO2 capture, protection against extreme weather events, habitats for endangered species, food and water reserves, leisure space, and an essential ecological corridor.
It is also directed towards everyone concerned by the escalating climate and ecological crisis affecting ecosystems across the world — a reality that should make any project contributing to further environmental destruction simply unacceptable.
Finally, the campaign speaks to all those who reject a predatory model of development that exploits both land and communities, driven by powerful institutions and corporations, and in which we refuse to be complicit.
Since Spain signed the Treaty of Accession to the European Union in 1986, becoming subject to the environmental directives introduced over the following decades, public administrations have repeatedly failed — either partially or entirely — to comply with these binding regulations in the Llobregat Delta. Today, Spain is the EU member state facing the highest number of open infringement procedures brought by the European Commission (EC).
In this context, the authorities have:
In response to these repeated failures, DEPANA filed an official Pilot Complaint with the European Commission in 2012, denouncing the inadequate protection of the Llobregat Delta. Since then, the organisation has remained in regular contact with the Commission, submitting reports documenting the ongoing lack of protection and the breaches committed by the relevant authorities.
This process eventually led to the first formal warning from the European Commission on 19 February 2021: a letter of formal notice sent to the Spanish Government as part of the infringement procedure opened against the authorities. The Commission highlighted the following issues:
Although point 4 was partially addressed in 2024 — after 12 years — the remaining issues are still unresolved.
Alongside this process with the European Commission, DEPANA has also reported repeated irregularities linked to the new road and rail access projects for the Port of Barcelona, which directly affect protected areas of the Delta and rely on an environmental impact declaration that expired in 2013. In late 2023, DEPANA initiated legal proceedings to halt the Port works affecting the new course of the Llobregat River. A few months later, the organisation also filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office after the Port of Barcelona began construction works near land contaminated with carcinogenic heavy metals on the left bank of the river.
This demanding work over more than 12 years has only been possible thanks to a small and committed team of volunteers, lawyers and technical staff. We now need to strengthen this work in order to continue defending the Llobregat Delta — and protect it from destructive planning decisions and the relentless spread of concrete.
The Llobregat Delta still preserves natural and agricultural areas of enormous ecological, social and environmental value. These spaces play a vital role in biodiversity protection, food production, freshwater provision and climate change mitigation. Despite being home to priority habitats protected under European legislation — including highly threatened and endangered species such as the kingfisher and the Eurasian bittern — more than 60% of the Delta has already been lost to concrete and urban development. Its ecological viability is now at breaking point.
Globally, humanity has already exceeded 7 of the 9 planetary boundaries — the critical biophysical limits that regulate the Earth’s stability and ensure the planet remains safely habitable. Climate change, biodiversity collapse, land-use change and freshwater exploitation are among the boundaries that have already been crossed or are dangerously close to being surpassed.
The social and environmental commitment behind this campaign is therefore broad and interconnected:
First and foremost, it seeks to halt large-scale infrastructure and urban development projects — including the airport expansion — across the Llobregat Delta, in order to protect what little unurbanised land still remains and preserve the benefits it provides.
Secondly, it aims to defend the Delta’s natural and agricultural spaces while supporting local food production and healthy public spaces for people to enjoy, while preventing the pollution and destruction caused by major infrastructure projects.
Thirdly, protecting the survival of the Delta’s ecosystems and farmland is essential to reducing the impact of extreme weather events intensified by climate change, itself driven by the unchecked consumption of fossil fuels.
Finally, defending the Delta also means making an active commitment to preventing further overshoot of the planet’s ecological limits, particularly the ones already mentioned above.
No serious roadmap towards a sustainable economy includes expanding airports, ports or large-scale urban developments. International commitments to decarbonisation and ecosystem restoration are fundamentally incompatible with these projects, which not only destroy a vital delta ecosystem, but also push us towards an increasingly unstable and uncertain future
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