Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

TRAVEL NEWS

Which flights will be affected by Spain’s airport strikes over Easter?

If you've got a flight booked to or from Valencia or Madrid-Barajas airport over Easter, industrial action by staff could delay your journey or even lead to it being cancelled.

Published: 28 March 2024 10:16 CET
Which flights will be affected by Spain's airport strikes over Easter?
Passengers affected by a Ryanair strike wait to change their ticket in 2022. Photo: LLUIS GENE/AFP.

Airport staff in Valencia and Madrid are going on strike over key Easter dates, meaning that as many as a thousand flights could be delayed or cancelled during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

Semana Santa celebrations have already been disrupted by rain this year, causing the cancellation of processions across the country, but travel during the busy Easter period is also set to be affected by strike action at two of Spain’s major airports.

At Valencia Manises airport, one of the busiest airports in Spain which welcomed almost 10 million passengers in 2023, flights could be affected over the entire Easter weekend (Thursday March 28th-Monday April 1st inclusive) because workers will walk out between 11am-13am on each day.

At Madrid-Barajas airport, the UGT union has called a strike for Wednesday 27th and Friday 29th March between 7am-12pm.

READ ALSO: Spain’s Valencia set for airport strike over Easter holidays

The walkout at Valencia begins today, March 28th. According to the live departures board provided by Aena, Spain’s national airport operator, which you can follow here, as of 9.30am flights are leaving the airport with minor delays of up to 40 minutes, though this is before the strike officially begins at 11am.

Aena live departures for Madrid-Barajas show that some flights have left with delays of up to 45 minutes this morning, though it is worth noting that staff are not officially on strike there today (walkouts in Madrid are Wednesday 27th and Friday 29th March between 7am-12pm) which could suggest a knock-on effect from yesterday’s strike action.

The industrial action comes during not only during Easter celebrations but operación salida, an intensely busy travel period during which millions of Spaniards travel home or go on holiday for Semana Santa.

READ ALSO: Strike action at Spanish airports set to disrupt Easter travel

Staff at Madrid-Barajas are striking for better pay and a new collective bargaining agreement, arguing their salaries have declined in real terms due to inflation, and employees at Valencia Manises are protesting against long working hours and a lack of staff, plus a dispute with regards to overtime pay.

Spanish media reports suggest that up to 1000 flights could be cancelled as a result of the walkouts. On Wednesday 27th, there was also ‘chaos’ at Palma de Mallorca airport, according to Spanish media, with long queues at security controls meaning it took many passengers an hour to get to their departure gate.

Which flights will be affected by Spain’s airport strikes over Easter?

Knowing exactly which flights could be affected, however, isn’t entirely clear. There seems to be certain airlines and routes more likely to be affected than others.

Madrid-Barajas

It is still unclear exactly which flights could be affected at Madrid-Barajas, so it is advisable to check with your airline. You can check the airport schedule on the Aena website here.

On Wednesday 27th March, the day the strike began in Madrid, both short and long-haul flights were delayed or cancelled.

Departure records from Flight Stats show that long-haul flights to the United States were cancelled throughout the day, and short-haul flights around Europe and to other Spanish cities were running with delays of up to 2 hours. Many also arrived on schedule, however.

Valencia Manises

As the strike action begins in Valencia on Thursday morning, reports suggest that several dozen flights could be cancelled, delayed or rescheduled. If you are uncertain about your flight, check with your airline.

On Thursday 28th, flights that could be affected by the stoppage include:

  • Ryanair flights connecting Valencia with Rome, Milan Bologna, Breslavia and Sofia 
  • United and Lufthansa flights connecting Valencia with Frankfurt and Munich
  • Easyjet and British Airways flights between Valencia and London
  • Turkish Airlines flights between Valencia and Istanbul
  • Air Europa flights between Valencia and Palma de Mallorca
  • Swiss flights connecting Valencia to Zurich
  • Volotea flights between Valencia and A Coruña
  • Eurowings’ Valencia-Stuttgart flights

On Friday 29th, flights that could be cancelled are:

  • Ryanair to Milan, Treviso, Trieste, Dublin, Marrakech and Palma de Mallorca
  • SAP and Tap Portugal flights between Valencia and Lisbon
  • United to Frankfurt
  • Lufthansa to Frankfurt, Munich
  • Austrian to Vienna
  • Air Nostrum to Ibiza
  • Delta to París Charles de Gaulle
  • Air France to París Charles de Gaulle
  • Air Europa to Palma de Mallorca
  • Easyjet to London
  • British Airways to London
  • Brussels Airlines to Brussels
  • Iberia to Tenerife North
  • Tap Portugal to Lisbon
  • Turkish Airlines to Istanbul
  • Swiss to Zúrich
  • Volotea to A Coruña, San Sebastián
  • Vueling to Tenerife North
  • Eurowings to Stuttgart

There is no further information yet about which flights could be affected on Saturday 30th, Sunday 31st and Monday April 1st.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

TOURISM

Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain’s mass tourism measures haven’t worked

Regions and cities around Spain have tried several ways to slow down the negative effects of mass tourism on local communities, largely without any luck and not addressing the major problem underpinning it.

Published: 3 May 2024 09:27 CEST
Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain's mass tourism measures haven't worked

The Spanish tourism sector continues to grow, but so does opposition to it.

Increasingly in Spain in recent years, anti-tourist sentiment (sometimes veering into anti-digital nomad sentiment) is on the rise, and much of it is born from frustrations about mass tourism and gentrification and their impact on Spaniards.

READ ALSO: Why does hatred of tourists in Spain appear to be on the rise?

In 2000, 46.4 million tourists visited Spain. In those days, travellers (often from Northern Europe) flocked to the coasts to stay in the hotel blocks right on the beach. The classic Spanish holiday, if you will.

But things are changing. By 2023, that figure had nearly doubled to 85.3 million.

Yet during those 23 years hotel accommodation grew by just 7 percent. This statistic, cited by Juan Molas, President of Spain’s Tourist Board and cited in Spanish daily El País, reveals a lot about the Spanish tourism sector and why efforts to try and combat mass tourism (or its negative effects, at least) have failed so far.

Molas’ statistic begs an obvious question: where do the rest of those tourists now stay, if not in traditional hotels?

Increasingly, in short-term accommodation such as tourist rentals and, in recent years, Airbnbs.

READ MORE: ‘Get the f*ck out of here’ – Málaga plastered with anti-tourism stickers

There have been regular protests against mass tourism around Spain in recent months, notably in places like the Canary Islands and Málaga.

Anti-tourist graffiti has appeared in places such as Barcelona, Valencia, Granada, the Canary and Balearic Islands, places that face the brunt of mass tourism in Spain. Locals complain that the proliferation of tourist rental accommodation depletes the affordable housing stock, inflates the local property market, and prices them out of their own neighbourhoods.

Often, these sorts of tourist rental accommodations are unlicensed and illegal. In Madrid, for example, there are tens of thousands of tourist apartments in Madrid available through platforms such as Airbnb and Booking, and yet recent findings show that barely five percent have a municipal tourist licence in order to operate legally. 

“Neither the central administration, nor the regions, nor the town councils have done their homework on the illegal [accommodation] offer, which is the most important scourge of tourism in Spain,” Molas says.

Though the problem seems obvious to many, including experts like Molas, some regions of Spain have focused on other ways to try and limit mass tourism… and they haven’t really worked so far.

READ ALSO:

Tourist tax

Tourist taxes made big news in recent weeks when Venice began charging tourists on day trips to visit the tourist hotspot.

In Spain, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands are the only two regions that have implemented tourist taxes so far, although not with the express aim of reducing the number of visitors.

Rather, Catalonia taxes overnight stays while the Balearic Islands taxes possible environmental damage. Visitor arrivals have continued to rise despite the taxes.

In the thirteen years since the tax was introduced in Barcelona, tourist numbers have risen from 14.5 million to 18 million. Importantly, a moratorium on hotel construction has been in place in the Catalan capital since 2017, which has led to an exponential growth in tourist rental accommodation in the city.

In the case of the Balearic Islands, the annual number of tourist arrivals has increased from 13 to 14 million in the six years in which the so-called ‘ecotax’ has been in force on the islands.

Limiting cruise ships

Coastal and island resorts in Spain have also tried to combat mass tourism by limiting the number of cruise ships allowed to dock there.

In 2022, Palma de Mallorca became the first destination in Spain and the second in Europe, after Dubrovnik in Croatia, to make an agreement with major cruise ship companies to establish a limit of three cruise ships per day, and specified that only one of them could bring more than 5,000 passengers ashore.

In places like Mallorca but also in Barcelona, enormous cruise ships previously docked and released thousands of tourists into the city at once.

But once again, like with the tourist taxes introduced, a limit on cruise ship numbers, although welcome, misses the point — cruise ship customers sleep on the ship, not in the real problem underpinning Spain’s mass tourism model: accommodation.

Tourist accommodation

Varying legislation restricting Airbnb-style rentals has already been introduced in recent years in cities such as Valencia, Palma, Seville, Tarifa, Madrid, Barcelona, and San Sebastián, with varying degrees of success. 

The number of short-term rental accommodation has exploded in Spain. They are particularly popular with remote workers and among digital nomads with the foreign spending power to price out locals. Recent data shows that in the old town of Seville, over half of residential homes are used for tourism. In the area of ​​Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, 28.3 percent are tourist apartments, while the figure stands at 18.3  percent in the centre of Valencia.  

READ MORE: How Spain’s Asturias region plans to limit short-term holiday lets

Tourist taxes and limits on cruise ship numbers are welcome. But they appear to be doing little to tackle the true underlying problem with Spain’s mass tourism model.

For now, measures are being rolled out largely on a regional level, but it may require the national government to step in and legislate, as it did when it scrapped the Golden Visa earlier this year, although again the effectiveness of this measure has also been questioned. 

READ MORE: Is Spain’s decision to axe golden visa about housing or politics?

Increasing the social housing stock more generally would also go some way to alleviate the pressure on Spaniards struggling to pay rent or even find a home.

Tourism is a double edged sword in Spain. The tourism sector has long made up a significant proportion of Spanish GDP and provided employment for locals, but the model it currently has is outdated, it inflates property markets, angers Spaniards, and creates tension between tourists and locals.

In 2023, international visitors spent €108 billion in Spain, 17 percent more than in 2019. Spanish travel industry association Exceltur forecasts that in 2024 it will surpass €200 billion for the first time.

READ ALSO: ‘The island can’t take it anymore’ – Why Tenerife is rejecting mass tourism

SHOW COMMENTS