Changes

The COVID-19 pandemic also had negative effects on sea transport and affected passenger services and, above all, cruise ship traffic. 80% of international freight, including energy commodities, is transported by sea. In the first quarter of 2020, maritime activity registered a year-on-year fall of 6.8%. In the second quarter of the same year, the drop had raised to 27% (The Great Reset, 2021). Decline in passenger and freight transport was detected in 70% of the exclusive economic zones of 124 countries, and was particularly notable in the Western Mediterranean (March et al., 2021).

The amount of goods transported by sea in Spain decreased by 14.4%, from 188.7 million tonnes in 2019 to 161.4 million tonnes in 2020. May 2020 was the worst affected month. Ports, both nationally and internationally, tend to specialise in different types of cargo, which means they were affected by the pandemic in different ways. For example, 20% of the total amount of goods shipped from commercial ports in Spain is channelled through Algeciras –at the strait of Gibraltar–, and 70% of those goods are general merchandise. Most of the goods handled at the ports of València, which deals with 15% of the freight loaded and unloaded in Spain, and Barcelona, which handles 10%, also fall into this category. These more generalist ports see the most traffic, whilst the ports of Cartagena, Huelva, Bilbao and Tarragona are more specialised, being 60% - 70% of their cargo liquid bulk. Each of these ports handles around 7% of the total port flows in Spain. The ports of València and Algeciras each account for 30% of the container shipping flows, followed by Barcelona, with almost 20%. Algeciras handles the most significant volume of cargo in transit, at 86%, followed by València and Barcelona, which handle nearly 60% of containers in transit and around 40% of international traffic.