First off, Don Quixote will put an end to the long, solitary dominance of the public company Aena. The mere fact that Aena will now have a competitor is worth its weight in gold to consumers. Not only will Aena have to deal with an airport only 45 minutes from Madrid with much lower rates and faster rotation times but also with the social pressure to improve its own services and lower its high prices. In fact, it looks like this is already happening. Seeing the advantages this kind of airport has for regional economies and tourism in particular, some businessmen are starting to tell Aena that if it doesn’t lower its prices, they will build new private international airports. This, for example, is what a small group of businessmen from the tourist sector did in Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands.

 

Moreover, low cost airlines like Ryanair have already expressed their interest in using the private airport in Ciudad Real, which is good news for airfares and airport rates. Iberia and the other traditional companies will have to differentiate their product according to consumer tastes and/or cut prices. But this won’t happen until the “Arrivederci Alitalia” painted on the Irish company’s 737s’ tailfins, which caused such a stir last year, becomes “Hasta la vista, Iberia.”

 

On the other hand, given the challenging context of outsourcing and de-industrialization facing Europe, private airports in Spain could prove decisive in helping our country to successfully emerge as the Florida of Europe; the entire continent’s preferred destination for vacationing. This is why, as long as Seo-Birdlife and the radical group Environmentalists in Action’s (the organization that lied about the existence of a mutant fish in waters near the nuclear plant in Garona) suit against Don Quixote for the supposed damage the airport might inflict on various species of bird, and the European Commission’s reports and tremendous environmental protectionism don’t paralyze the project, this first private Spanish airport could become an example to follow and the linchpin for improving the tourist sector and the entire Spanish economy.

 

But there is something even more important about this project. That is, it is past time for there to be international airports in this country whose mission is not “framed in the government’s general transport policy,” as Article 1 in Aena’s statutes reads. Instead, their mission should be framed by entrepreneurs’ own policies, risking their own investments to satisfy the general transport needs of the consumers. It is high time, in short, for consumer sovereignty and capitalism to come to this vital sector.