O'Leary said that opening a base in BCN would not affect flights from GRO or REU.
Well, you can believe this if you wish, you can also believe that this is just a way for RYR to try and get a better deal from GRO/REU which will indeed happen ,after all the money that has been spent there ,they will do anything to keep RYR.
However, the main problem here in that argument is that a much higher percentage of RYR pax to GRO (don't really know for REU it would not be logical to fly there unless you were heading to Sitges or the S of Barcelona) are going to Barcelona rather than to the beach. In Summer (Jun- Sep) it is probably 50% for each. Oct-May it is at least 75% ,maybe more, to Barcelona.
If you as a passenger are given the choice, fly to your destination direct, or fly to another airport 90km (1hr/25e return on a bus) which will you choose ?
Regardless of O'Leary's assurances, the client will decide the issue, and as bookings for GRO reduce ,flights will be withdrawn/transfered to BCN.
I don't see any other outcome.
This is going to leave the Catalan politicians who authorised the massive investment in Terminal/Parking/Radar/Cat3ILS etc etc , looking very silly when the current contract with Ryanair runs out, and they go back to having the half a million passengers a year from Jun-Sep that they had prior to RYR pushing that figure up to 5.5million.