An airport which was once heralded to be an alternative to Spain’s busiest airport, capable of handling up to 2.5 million passengers a year, has since become one of the country’s most embarrassing infrastructure failures. Opened in 2008, Ciudad Real Airport was set to be a gateway to the popular central region of Spain, including the capital, Madrid, the airport shut down just four years later.
Having been built at an eyewatering cost of more than €1 billion (£950 million), it was eventually sold at auction for a meagre €10,000 (8,600). This price is about equivalent to the cost of one set of air stairs, which passengers use to board aircraft. Once hoped to become a hub for low-cost airlines like Ryanair and Vueling, which did run flights for a short time, the airport only carried 190,000 passengers during its entire operation and around three flights a week.
30 years ago, Spain was riding a wave of low interest rates as a result of joining the Euro, which triggered a major boost in infrastructure investment. At the same time, budget airlines were transforming European travel, with smaller cities across the continent beginning to build secondary airports to attract these low-cost carriers. Unsurprisingly, the city of Ciudad Real, just south of Madrid, wanted a piece of the action.
So, in the early 2000s, construction began on the new Ciudad Real Airport, which would feature a 2.5-mile runway, long enough to accommodate an Airbus A380 and an over 300,000-square-foot terminal, with room for expansion if needed. It would also have a high-speed train station on the Madrid-Seville line, as it was assumed that 80% of travellers would arrive via the route, with the promise of an under-an-hour journey to the capital.
Construction, which officially began in 2002, hit a snag very early on. The airport’s first location had to be abandoned after environmental assessments flagged concerns about its impact on protected bird habitats nearby. At the second site, construction was halted again in 2004 after the EU ruled that the environmental impact still had not been properly considered.
By the time work resumed, two years later and under strict conditions, the project had lost momentum and the wider economic picture had transformed again, The B1M explained.
The opening of Ciudad Real Airport was delayed until late 2008, by which time the global financial crisis had struck and air travel demand had all but collapsed. By 2009, the airport handled just 54,000 passengers, a fraction of what was needed to be financially viable. Only two domestic airlines operated there, both of which were short-lived.
The first international flight, a Ryanair service from Stansted Airport, began in 2010 and lasted just five months. By October 2011, the final passenger service had been and gone and the airport closed in April the following year.
The biggest flaw of the project was its location. Over 100 miles from the capital – more than three times the distance between central London and Luton and Stansted airports. The high-speed rail line was supposed to solve this problem, but the station was never built. Today, the bridge linking the terminal to the railway ends in an empty field.
By June 2012, the company behind the airport had declared bankruptcy. Yellow crosses were painted across the runway to stop pilots from landing by mistake. It has since become a storage facility for planes and was used throughout the pandemic when the majority of flights were grounded. It is also often used by pilots for training, as its runway is one of the longest in Europe.
The Spanish government is now also considering it as a potential emergency reception centre for migrants to alleviate pressure on existing facilities.
