Catalonia’s airport takeover bid ‘unreasonable’

3 August 2006

BARCELONA – The Catalan government has been told it cannot take over the running of Barcelona’s El Prat airport.

On Wednesday, all Catalan parties, bar the conservative PP part, called for the handing over of the airport’s management to the Catalan regional government, the Generalitat.

The parties blamed Iberia and the airport management company AENA for the chaos which kicked off at El Prat on Friday when around 400 workers occupied the runways.

They said had Iberia workers been better informed about the baggage handling dispute, they would not have taken their illegal industrial action which closed the airport for over eight hours and caused knock-on delays.

But Maria Teresa de la Vega, on a visit to Bolivia, said the situation at El Prat did not warrant a management takeover by the local authority.

“That isn’t very sensible or reasonable”, she said.

Numerous parties have been blaming each other for the airport crisis. The conservatives blame the government for failing to send in police to remove workers from the runways; others have blamed the Catalan government for doing too little; other critics have blamed Iberia and AENA.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news