Spanish airports are operating again after a 24-hour strike by air traffic controllers that caused travel chaos for hundreds of thousands of people on Spain’s busiest holiday weekends.
The Spanish government canceled the strike Saturday by announcing an emergency measure, a "state of alarm," normally reserved for calamities such as earthquakes or floods, to get planes back in the skies and clear messy airports clogged with irritated travelers who suffered and had their holidays ruined by these kinds of unexpected strikes, to call on the controllers to get back to work or they would have to face the jail. Within a few hours, the measure was implemented; controllers started moving back to their posts.
According to Spain's civil aviation authority, more than 4,000 flights were scheduled and out of 296 controllers supposed to be working, 286 were at their posts, thereby enabling airports to operate fully. It was calculated that more than 600,000 passengers faced travel disturbance and a backlog of flights meant that long lines of annoyed travelers were still commonplace around the country, including Barcelona and the popular winter destination of the Canary Islands.
