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Air traffic controllers call July strike across Spain

Spanish air traffic controllers have called partial strikes over two weekends in July - threatening to disrupt some of the busiest travel days for holidaymakers.

Air traffic controllers call July strike across Spain
Passengers waiting at Madrid Barajas airport during the 2010 air traffic controllers strike. Photo: Dominique Faget/AFP

The strikes have been called for July 11th, 12th, 25th and 26th Spain’s air traffic controller union, La Unión Sindical de Controladores Aéreos (USCA) has said.

The stoppages will take place between 10am and 1pm on July 11th and 25th and between 5pm and 8pm on July 12th and 26th.

The strike is the second such action in as many months after air traffic controllers took action over four days in June in protest at sanctions handed out to 61 air traffic controllers for shutting down Barcelona’s airspace in 2010.

“The USCA thinks that the decision to maintain sanctions against the 61 air traffic controllers is incomprehensible,” the trade union said in a statement released on Monday.

They confirmed the strike days with a tweet, blaming the lack of will by Enaire to reach an agreement.

 

Enaire, which runs the majority of airports in Spain, fined 61 air traffic controllers from Barcelona Control Centre one month's salary, as well as suspending them for a month, because of a strike which led to a national emergency in 2010.

Air traffic controllers across Spain staged a spontaneous strike, leading to the government to issue a “state of alert”, ordering the air traffic controllers back to work and bringing in the army to take over air traffic control in the meantime.

It was the first time the Spanish government had called a state of alert since its return to democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. Air traffic controllers were escorted back to work by armed guards.

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