The Castellon Airport
Like bureaucracy, the Spanish have failed to eliminate corruption and incompetence by politicians.
The possibilities are endless and I will bring you some examples in my blogs. They are endless because the political network has changed little since Franco’s days, when nepotism and corruption were endemic. I remember in Barcelona in 1965 I was told you had to bribe a member of the telephone company to have a telephone installed.
However the Castellon Airport fiasco is a recent example of either corruption or incompetence on a massive scale.
Broadly the facts are these.
Castellon’s airport was opened in March 2011 at a cost of 150 million Euros ($200 million, £135 million).
It is yet to see a single passenger walk through its doors.
Carlos Fabra, the local council boss, said its opening meant the socioeconomic transformation of Castellón. At the same inauguration event the ex-president of Valencia, Francisco Camps, said the town was at “the high point of Spanish history.”
Sr. Fabra, knowing permissions had not been granted to operate as an airport tried to make the best of it, saying ” You can visit the building and walk along the runway, which you would not be able to do if aircraft were taking off .”
Only a Spanish politician could dream up this positivity in the face of a disaster.
Taking up on his offer 7,000 people signed up on Facebook to a 24 hour rave from midnight on 24 April 2011. The party promoters asked everyone to have a day of parties, barbecues, mobile disco, kite flying or eat Easter cake. They asked those with musical instruments to bring them, and invited skaters , cyclists, families and ravers, saying ’We have an airport to enjoy’.
On the internet you can find videos of Senores Fabra and Camps proudly opening in the airport together in March 2011, but recently a Spanish TV program host made fun .
of the fiasco. This starts with excerpts of the old film of the inauguration of the Castellon Airport by them and Sr. Fabra saying ’it’s an airport for the people of Castellon and you can walk on the runways’. The TV host then says so the people of Castellon have an airport to walk on.
In November 2013 El Pais newspaper reported, ‘The airport in Castellón — which has become notorious both at home and abroad for never having received a single plane – will require a minimum additional investment of three million Euros before it will receive the authorization and permission it needs to open. That’s according to the conditions included in the tender published this week by the Valencia regional government for companies interested in the commercial exploitation and maintenance of the airport.
The regional government has budgeted 25 million Euros for the management of the airport over the next 20 years. But before the planes finally arrive, the region will have to finalize the documentation needed for the State Air Safety Agency (AESA) to certify that the airport complies with all of the requirements for operation. The airport is still lacking equipment and infrastructure, such as computer systems and software, the cost of which has been estimated at three million euros’.
So there we are. Awaiting what happens next.
However an update on Sr. Fabra and Sr. Camps is relevant.
Although not directly relevant to the Castellon airport fiasco it is perhaps no surprise that in November 2013 the El Pais newspaper reported that ‘Carlos Fabra, the former chief of Castellón province who became famous for building a planeless airport featuring a large statue in his honour, has been sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud.
The anticorruption public prosecutor had requested an eight-year jail sentence for the Popular Party (PP) politician on four counts against him related to his not declaring income of almost two million euros to the tax office between 1999 and 2004 – a fraud worth almost 700,000 euros.
The Castellón provincial court absolved him of two other charges of influence peddling and bribery. In total, the prosecution had hoped for accumulated sentences of 13 years against the man who has personified power in the Mediterranean province for almost two decades.
Fabra’s ex-wife was also sentenced to two years in prison on two other tax fraud charges.
The sentence is the culmination of an almost 10-year investigation into the man who headed the provincial council of Castellón, part of the Valencia region, between 1995 and 2011.
In the last session of the trial in October, the public prosecutor considered Fabra’s responsibility proven and emphasized the accusations of tax fraud: “He is not just any fraudster, he was president of the provincial council and while he demanded taxes he was committing fraud in the background.”
Fabra was also ordered to pay a fine of 693,000 euros and credit the same amount to the tax office. His ex-wife will have to pay both a 274,000-euro fine and the same sum to the tax office.
Despite the four-year sentence, the former head of the Castellón PP said he was very happy with the ruling because it did not find him guilty of bribery or influence peddling. In his view, this implied his actions had not involved any “corruption.”
Fabra, who is still secretary general of the Castellón Chamber of Commerce, said he would have to study any appeal against the conviction with his lawyer, but acknowledged that they had planned to appeal any prison sentence handed down to both the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court.’
So he was happy he wasn’t found guilty of ‘bribery or influence peddling.’ Need I say more?
So Sr. Fabra has his problems. What about Sr. Camps?
The Anticorruption Prosecutor has recently decided to ask the Valencia High Court of Justice for the imputation of the ex president of the Valencia community, Francisco Camps, and the Mayor of Valencia, Rita Barberà.
It concerns indications of crimes of misuse of public funds and fraud, being carried out in the contraction of the Noos Institute to organise the events for Valencia Summit.
So it appears Sr. Camps has his concerns as well.
Accusations of corruption in the Valencia government are an ongoing saga in the Spanish press and no doubt I will return to this in the future.
