A Crash Landing For Don Quijote

There is no shortage of monuments to the bursting of the construction bubble in Spain, but amongst the most prominent should surely be the airport occasionally known as Don Quijote, located near to Ciudad Real. This airport was opened just before the crisis really started to bite as the first privately run commercial airport in the country, and has ended up going into liquidation with enormous debts.

Things never went very well for the project. Back in 2007 I wrote about the opportunist attempt by the airport's owners to mislead passengers into thinking that they might be landing somewhere near Madrid. The "Madrid Sur" plan had to be dropped following the protests against the idea, and eventually the airport opened as Don Quijote, but seems to have ended up as just being plain old Ciudad Real; which it is at least near to.

The first commercial passenger flights into the airport seemed to consist mainly of hunting parties from Germany but then Air Berlin threw in the towel earlier this year. Funnily enough Ryanair started flying into the airport just a few weeks ago, but following the announcement of the suspensión de pagos they announced their intention to stop flights. All of which would have left the airport as perhaps a good place to install a few more windmills. But then Ryanair have subsequently backtracked and announced that they will continue flights to Ciudad Real. It's a curious situation, given their liking for generous public subsidies for flying unsuspecting passengers into the middle of nowhere.

The airport has achieved the distinction of being a major contributor to the downfall of both of the Spanish savings banks that have so far had to be rescued by the government; the Caja Castilla - La Mancha and CajaSur. Total debts are estimated at being around €300 million. Sadly, it seems that the airport didn't quite get its own high speed AVE train station; although this formed part of the original plan. It would have been a station to rival that constructed near the unfinished desert-like urbanisations outside of Guadalajara, which on a good day is said to have as many as 20 users! Because Ciudad Real city already has an AVE station.

The 'pelotazo' associated with this disaster was not intended to be based around housing, there was instead a plan for a huge tourism and casino complex to be called El Reino de Don Quijote. Some of those behind this now phantom project were also part of the group behind the airport. It seems that all of these grandiose plans were hatched with the active support of the region's politicians, but Ciudad Real will have to wait a few years now for the Quijote miracle.

Water Flows Again In Las Tablas De Daimiel

Journalists were taken on a boat tour last weekend of Las Tablas de Daimiel, so that they could marvel at a level of water that once again allows this hugely neglected national park to be referred to as wetlands. It seems that the underground fires that were burning in the dried out peat of Las Tablas have now finally been extinguished. The Spanish government would almost certainly like journalists to write that this transformation has been accomplished as a result of the emergency water transfer organised from the Tajo river. In reality most of the water to be seen in the area these days is a result of more natural conditions, the unusually intense rainfall in Castilla-La Mancha during the last few weeks has provided significantly more water than the government's efforts.

Whatever the source of the water it has to be welcomed. The problem is whether, as critics of the government's plan have frequently pointed out, the water will last for very long. The reason why Las Tablas dried out was not because of natural causes, there are said to be thousands of illegal wells being used for agriculture in this area and over exploitation of the aquifers is what led to the dramatic situation for the park. So if nothing is done to prevent the continuing extraction of water from these wells it seems quite likely that the water shipped from the Tajo could just end up passing temporarily through the Tablas before being used for crops. The long term question is whether the government is really prepared to stand up to the demands for water for agricultural use in order to preserve Daimiel.

Nuclear War breaks Out....In The PP

It's not been a very easy week for Maria Dolores de Cospedal, the general secretary of the Partido Popular. To make it worse, as so often seems to be the case her most serious problems come from within her own party. The crisis in this case has come from an unlikely source, the PP mayor of the tiny village of Yebra in the province of Guadalajara. This municipality voted the other day to bid for being the location of Spain's centralized storage facility for nuclear waste. Up to now the waste has been stored, with varying degrees of security, in the nuclear plants themselves. But now the government wants a central depot for the ever larger nuclear waste mountain. Officially, the facility is described as being temporary, but nobody seems willing to define whether temporary in this case means 10 years or 10000.

So what's the problem for the enthusiastically pro-nuclear PP? It seems that De Cospedal, who doubles as PP leader in Castilla La Mancha, is only in favour of nuclear energy when it's located in other parts of the country; despite the fact that Guadalajara is home to one active nuclear plant and another that has only recently been closed. So she has threatened the mayor of Yerba with disciplinary action for seeking to host the storage facility. It's all quite odd, if they think that nuclear energy is so clean and safe it's surprising that PP leaders don't volunteer to store the waste on their own, often extensive, properties. Whatever, De Cospedal put her foot down over the issue and then promptly found out just how little authority she has in the party as Andalucian PP leader Javier Arenas quickly announced that no action would be taken against the mayor of Yebra. Surely Maria Dolores could appeal to her boss, PP leader Mariano Rajoy, to back her up? In now typical fashion Mariano asserted the extent of his own control over the party by stating that he didn't have a firm opinion on the issue! De Cospedal has been left to fight her own nuclear war.

Las Tablas De Daimiel On Fire

A few months ago I wrote a post on the plight of Las Tablas de Daimiel, but it seems that since then the situation in what is supposed to be one of the most important wetland areas of Spain has got even worse. The lack of water in the park has now led to a situation where underground peat fires are burning, and the European Union has threatened to intervene to force the Spanish government to act.

There's nothing very natural about this disaster, and it looks as if the Spanish government has more or less decided to let the park die. Now, with the threat of outside intervention, there is talk of a water transfer being arranged from the Tajo River. The poor Tajo seems to be the solution to everyone's water problems, and already there have been complaints from Murcia that water should be used to help preserve a national park when they can be using it to grow tomatoes. Precisely the attitude that has led to the once water sufficient Tablas reaching the state they are in today. It would be interesting to know whether any water from the Tajo still makes it across the frontier into Portugal. If anyone ever wants to create a monument to unsustainable management of water resources then Las Tablas de Daimiel will be as good a place as any.

Water Not Holy Enough For Swine Flu

The Spanish Catholic Church has shown a disappointing lack of faith in its own propaganda recently. The faithful who came to Toledo last weekend to pay homage to La Virgen del Sagrario were advised not to follow the traditional customs of kissing the Virgin's medal or drinking the "agua de la Virgen" from communal containers. Why the Virgin should have a medal is a mystery to me, presumably it's awarded for good behaviour. Anyway, the reason for the advice was the risk of passing on swine flu. This is more than a little ironic when you consider that the water from the holy well has long been claimed to have curative powers! Meanwhile, poor Madrid bumps along in mid-table in the international swine flu league with a miserable 700 cases a week. Although we're still in the pretemporada.

Haciendo Caja

The Spanish government has had to step in directly for the first time to prop up one of the country's regional savings banks; the Caja Castilla - La Mancha. The government claims that it is just guaranteeing the solvency of the bank whilst it overcomes its "liquidity" problems, but it is now being run by nominees from the Banco de Espana. The irony of this has been noted by much of the press as the president of the bank was at one time a PSOE member of parliament who is most remembered for his interrogation of a former governor of the Banco de España. What goes around comes around. The caja had become severely overstretched for reasons that threaten other cajas around the country, the collapse of the construction boom. It seems that they had also invested heavily in the airport which will no longer be called Madrid Sur, but which has opened for business just at the beginning of the recession.

The government still insists that there are no fundamental problems with the Spanish banking system. Whilst that does seem to be largely the case in terms of the worthless sub-prime type investments that have caused problems in other countries, Spain has its own problems because of the dependency on the property market. On the one hand construction companies are no longer able to pay their considerable debts because they are saddled with huge numbers of unsold homes. The banks are in many cases receiving unsold properties instead of money repayments and are becoming the unwilling owners of substantial property portfolios. At the same time the relentless rise in unemployment is causing many of those who bought property in the boom years to default on their loans. The government has been trying to encourage the cajas to merge with each other, and it was the failure of such an attempt that led to the intervention in this case.

Talking of toxic assets with limited value, the government has also moved to freeze the attempt by Esperanza Aguirre to turn Caja Madrid into another branch of her ever expanding web of patronage. The national government has referred to the Constitutional Court the new law which Aguirre created to give her administration control of the bank at the expense of Madrid's ayuntamiento, amongst others. Given that Partido Popular leader Mariano Rajoy was either unwilling or unable to put an end to the prolonged and silly struggle between Aguirre and Madrid mayor Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, which is being fought out with Caja Madrid as the battleground, it's been left to others to do the job. The appeal means that the law can effectively be suspended for a crucial few months which might deny Espe her prize. As if the cajas didn't already have enough problems.

Remembering Guadalajara

This time last year I went with some friends to pass the weekend in the beautiful area known as the Alto Tajo, in the province of Guadalajara. It was a very hot July weekend, and we went swimming in the river Tajo to cool down. As we left the area where we had been swimming we stopped and took some photographs, the surrounding countryside is mostly hilly pine forest with the river cutting its way through the hills. One of these photographs is now quite difficult for me to look at, I’m not even sure if I still have it – it’s a group portrait like many others but with the difference that in the background of the photo there is a clearly visible column of smoke. At the time the photograph was taken we had no idea that this smoke column, some distance away, was turning into one of the most devastating forest fires of last summer – ripping its way through the resinous pines with a speed that made it extremely difficult to bring under control, spurred on by a hot dry wind. By the evening we already knew more about the fire, and that it was serious. We were far enough away from it to be safe and we slept out in the woods that night.

The next day on our way back to Madrid it was clear that the fire was still raging, we had seen that morning regular flights from the planes that were collecting water in reservoirs to try and bring the flames under control. We could also see from the road the massive cloud of smoke that the fire was producing. However, it was only when we got back to the city that we realised what was really going on out in the woods; on the television news we found out that a team of 12 people fighting the fire had been trapped in a gully and surrounded by the flames. Only one of these 12 survived to be able to tell how the fire had caught the group by surprise as it spread so quickly, leaving them with no chance of escape. The fire had been started by a poorly controlled barbecue, one of the many barbecues that were surely held that day in the region – we had one ourselves. The idea of a day out in the country accompanied with a barbecue is well established in Spain, and the place where the fire started was equipped for barbecues like many other similar sites, it wasn’t that someone had just lit a fire in the middle of nowhere.

Eventually the fire was brought under control, and then after the disaster the government took measures; by decree they made it illegal for fires to be lit in the countryside. But some of these measures were temporary, in the end it is the responsibility of the autonomous regional governments to control fire prevention measures, and each one can adopt a different policy. Now, one year on, the families of the dead firefighters are denouncing the lack of action taken by the authorities. After the fire last year there was plenty of coverage in the media of the poor contracts that are offered to those who work in tasks of fire prevention, and who get called on to act when a fire has broken out. They are not well paid and in many cases work on temporary contracts, as the authorities refuse to spend more than is absolutely necessary on fire prevention. It is a task which should be carried out in winter and spring, but which is often left until it is potentially too late to do properly. One year on the hot dry conditions mean that the risk is high; so far there have fortunately been relatively few fires this summer. Whether any of this is due to extra efforts and resources to prevent them is not clear. The death of 11 people should not be forgotten, it’s too high a price to pay just so that people can have their lunch in the middle of the woods rather than in the nearest village.