Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has a big dream for his country’s busiest airport, Madrid, and a plan to make it one of Europe’s largest and a hub for more routes to Latin America and Asia—but the path to his vision may not be easy.
The expansion would increase the airport’s capacity to more than 90 million passengers a year by 2031, a 28% increase from current volumes, and would, he said, generate thousands of new jobs. He told a tourism industry congress that “This will be the biggest investment in the last decade in airport infrastructure in Spain. We are going to turn Madrid airport into one of the biggest airports in the European Union and thus the world.”
Sanchez’s plan, which his coalition government partners are not all in agreement with, at least yet, would spend €1.7 billion on an expansion of the airport’s Terminal 4, and another €700 million on better unifying Terminals 1, 2 and 3. New hotels and cargo facilities would also be built.
Tourism makes up 12.8% of Spain’s economy, and Spain is, after France, the second-most visited destination for international travel. 84 million visitors came to Spain last year and the number is continuing to rise.
