The expansion of El Prat Airport in Barcelona have been abandoned, because it would have led to more air traffic above Lionel Messi’s mansion in the coastal town of Castelldefels.
The official explanation given for why the addition of a new runway located to the sea was discarded, were environmental and financial reasons.
But the president of Spanish low-cost airline, Vueling, offered a different perspective.
“You cannot pass over where Messi lives,” Javier Sanchez-Prieto said during a talk at Barcelona’s ESADE university.
“This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world.”
Vueling, based at El Prat de Llobregat, has hubs in Barcelona-El Prat Airport and Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport.
Messi reportedly bought his neighbours’ house last year, to keep the noise level to a minimum around his home
