"We Were Never Consulted": Residents Along the L9 Sud Extension Sound Off as Barcelona's Metro Expansion Enters Its Final Push

The drilling started again at 7 a.m. on Monday in the Zona Franca industrial belt, rattling windows in the residential blocks on Carrer de la Mecànica and sending dust clouds across the allotments behind the Can Tunis neighbourhood. Residents there have been tolerating this for months. The L9 Sud metro line extension — Barcelona's most expensive and perpetually delayed infrastructure project — is finally in its decisive phase, with the Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB) targeting a 2027 partial opening for the stretch linking Fira de Barcelona's Gran Via pavilions to El Prat de Llobregat town centre.

The timing matters. Mayor Jaume Collboni has staked significant political capital on transport connectivity as the city battles a housing rental crisis that is pushing working families further from the centre. Better metro access to southern districts is supposed to make peripheral neighbourhoods more viable. But the communities that will supposedly benefit the most are, right now, living through construction chaos — and many say the city has done a poor job of explaining the trade-off.

"The Promises and the Reality Are Two Different Things"

Residents of La Marina del Prat Vermell, the half-built neighbourhood wedged between the port's logistics zone and the Ronda Litoral, have been waiting for metro access since the district's first housing blocks opened in 2011. The AMB's own documents show the L9 connection was supposed to reach them by 2016. A decade on, construction hoardings still line Carrer de la Foc. A community notice board at the local civic centre, the Centre Cívic La Bàscula, was recently plastered with handwritten complaints about road closures on Avinguda de la Zona Franca that are adding 20 to 35 minutes to daily commutes for people driving to work at the Mercabarna wholesale market complex.

Further south, in El Prat de Llobregat itself, the mood is a mixture of cautious optimism and exhaustion. The town's main commercial street, Carrer de Madrid, has had utilities trenches open since last autumn. Local shopkeepers told neighbourhood association Veïns de El Prat that foot traffic dropped by roughly 30 percent in the four months to May, according to a survey the association presented to the town council in June. The AMB has offered a compensation fund for affected businesses, but several small traders say the paperwork requirements are so burdensome that they have not applied.

The total cost of the L9 line — all three sections combined — has ballooned to more than €3.8 billion since construction began in 2002, making it one of the most expensive metro projects per kilometre in European history. The southern extension alone carries a revised budget of approximately €620 million, according to figures presented to the Catalan government's Departament de Territori in a February 2026 audit. Critics at the Sindicat de Llogateres, the tenants' union that has been vocal on housing issues across the metropolitan area, argue that the money would have delivered faster results if split between bus rapid transit corridors and social housing construction in the same southern corridors.

What Comes Next for Affected Neighbourhoods

The AMB has scheduled a series of public information sessions beginning July 14 at the Pavelló de la Fira de Barcelona's L2 venue in Hospitalet de Llobregat. Attendance is open to any resident, and the sessions are supposed to include a formal Q&A with the project's technical director. Whether that format will satisfy communities that feel they have been consulted after the fact rather than before remains the central frustration.

For now, the practical advice from neighbourhood groups is blunt: avoid Avinguda de la Zona Franca by car during morning peak hours, expect the Can Tunis bus routes — the 38 and the 109 — to run late until at least September, and document any property damage with photographs dated before the September submission deadline for the AMB's compensation scheme. The metro, when it finally arrives, will change these neighbourhoods. Whether the people already living in them feel they had any say in how is another question entirely.