Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced an investment of one billion euros between 2027 and 2031 in the Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport, including the old terminal and the new taxiway, among other projects. These projects will increase aircraft traffic and prevent the provincial airfield from becoming overwhelmed. However, the Prime Minister skipped over the construction of a second runway at the Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport.
Sánchez visited the Alicante airport to present the Airport Regulation Document (DORA) 2027-2031, which includes the planning for Aena’s infrastructure. The government will invest €13 billion across Spain, compared to more than €2 billion in the previous plan, Sánchez explained. The investments will reach “all Spanish airports.”
The works at Alicante-Elche Airport were more than necessary. Especially since Aena forecasts that more than 20 million passengers will have passed through Alicante-Elche Airport by 2025, which will have been recognized for the fifth time as the best in Europe in its category. This will once again set a record after 2024.
The national forecast is for 320 million passengers. Of these, the PM indicated that one in ten passengers passing through Spain will do so in the Valencian Community. That’s 30.2 million. In another twist, two out of three travellers arriving in the autonomous region by air do so in Alicante.
More data: a 10% improvement in air traffic represents 0.5% of the national GDP. And another: every thousand passengers creates a direct job. Therefore, Pedro Sánchez has thrown a lifeline to the tourism sector in general, one of the country’s main economic drivers, which he called on to “continue caring for and protecting.”
However, the PM did not address one of the business community’s greatest desires: the second runway, a request from the Chamber of Commerce and the Generalitat, which the Ministry of Transport has consistently denied, asserting that the airlines were not requesting it.
But even the president of Aena, Maurici Lucena, has acknowledged that “things are starting to get tight” in terms of air traffic. “The surge in traffic following the pandemic has pushed several airports to the limit of their capacity,” he admitted, and, therefore, “large airports need a huge wave of investment.”
Transport Minister Óscar Puente has also acknowledged the issue. He announced that Spain will break its passenger record in 2025, with 320 million passengers on the national network. This is 15 million more than last year.
The DORA “is unprecedented in recent decades,” the president of Aena stated. The public company will be responsible for the total investment reflected in the document. The Council of Ministers, “which is where the government is governed,” according to Puente, will approve the document in approximately one year.
This document “reveals the Spanish government’s unrealistic priorities regarding airports,” Puente said.