Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have stood by our Port Community, taking decisive measures to soften the blow. Two days before the start of the official lockdown, we announced the first financial aid measures —not penalising the terminals if they were unable to meet minimum committed traffic levels and introducing flexibility in the payment of the occupation fee—, prioritising companies' ability to keep running.

Then we brought in further economic measures, and by the end of the year we had lent clear support to the industrial sectors, both to our concessionaires and to our customers and the companies that operate every day in the Port of Barcelona. The economic emergency plan that we launched a few days after the start of the lockdown meant, on the one hand, releasing €84 million in liquidity through deferred payments of port fees and in advance payments to suppliers. On the other hand, we forewent €7.5 million in terms of occupation and ship's fees, spelling a direct saving for companies in the Port Community. In addition, we developed a recovery plan to boost the economy of the Port and our hinterland involving recouping traffic, detecting new opportunities and innovation. 

All of us at the Port of Barcelona are aware that we are an essential economic driver. Our mission is to generate prosperity in our community, while increasing the competitiveness of our customers by providing efficient and sustainable logistics and transport services. That is why we help the business community and, ultimately, society as a whole with our contribution to economic recovery to help us all out of the current situation as quickly as possible.  

Despite our efforts to keep activity at acceptable levels, port traffic in 2020 was severely impacted by the slowdown in the economy during the first months of the pandemic. Nevertheless, from July onwards, we began to see a continuous recovery, especially in exports. Over all these months, the Port has evolved in parallel with the country's industrial sector, which has shown great resilience. This allowed us to end 2020 with a notable recovery in container traffic, which shows that international trade continues apace, and markets keep on functioning. 

While it is true that the pandemic has made us focus most of our efforts on finding imaginative solutions to help the economy, it is no less true that throughout 2020 we have been very aware of the difficulties faced by the general population in this current crisis environment. That is why the staff of the Port of Barcelona worked during the year to continue with our social sustainability and environmental sustainability projects, because at the Port of Barcelona we are fully aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a series of actions underway, as you can see in this 2020 Report, and because progress in the energy transition and innovation is one of the levers that will help us maintain our leadership in the international port sector and set ourselves apart from our competitors. Digitalisation and innovation are the two main tools we use in the Port of Barcelona to increase our competitiveness, improve our services and maintain sustainable growth, while fostering the emergence of a more egalitarian and inclusive economy and way of life. 

One of the most important milestones of 2020 was the provisional approval of the Port of Barcelona Fourth Strategic Plan, a document that sets out the lines of work which, once developed, will facilitate a port model that guarantees social, environmental and social sustainability of the port's activity and that of its area of influence. 

To make this port model a reality, we have embarked on a path that will lead us to differentiate the services offered by the port and its activity to strengthen our resistance to global and sectoral crises; we will prioritise projects with high economic profitability; we will continue to work on cooperation agreements with powerful global operators and on establishing agreements at the local level; we will improve our customer orientation; we will bet on the autonomous and dynamic management of the critical elements for the competitiveness of the Port; we will make greater efforts to increase the safety, security and vigilance of people, goods and facilities, and will be very attentive to the environment as we lead the decarbonisation of transport and logistics. 

The approval of this Plan was one piece of good news in 2020, but we have had others. One of them, which had been a long time coming, was the long-awaited announcement that we have finally unblocked the building of the new road and rail accesses to the Port of Barcelona. On 7 October 2020, the Spanish Ministry of Public Works, the Generalitat de Catalunya, ADIF, Puertos del Estado and the Port of Barcelona signed the cooperation protocol to promote the construction of the new southern road and rail accesses, and now work is under way on the prior studies and the basic project required before signing the legal instruments or agreements necessary for their development. We have also managed to unlock another very important project to provide even greater impetus to our commitment to intermodality: the construction of the 750-metre sidings in the Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona Corridor. 

At international level, at the end of September we announced an agreement with Busan Port Authority to jointly build a logistics centre in Barcelona, which will provide a stable logistics platform for companies doing business between Northeast Asia and southern Europe. In the midst of the global covid-19 pandemic, the ports of Busan and Barcelona have announced a project that is unique in the world, because it is the first time that two ports will make such a platform a reality. 

And in terms of our synergies with the city, in July we announced our intention to bring the European Green Deal to the most public area of the Port of Barcelona, while maintaining its uniqueness and its key role for the sustainable growth of the Catalan capital. We will create a larger and greener Port Vell, or Old Port, in which we will open new public spaces to the public and we will sketch out a port-city that develops in a sustainable way, that is culturally attractive and is a benchmark in innovation. In short, it will become a focus of knowledge and talent in the nautical and maritime sector. 

All these projects show that the Port of Barcelona does not stop. Not even in the midst of a pandemic. And it is a message that must serve us all for the future: we are unstoppable. In the most difficult times, we must move forward to meet our challenge and our commitment to society.