Madrid airport to undergo €2.4bn expansion 18 years after T4 opening

SPAIN'S president Pedro Sánchez has announced plans to expand Madrid's Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport with a budget of €2.4 billion – the largest investment in aviation infrastructure in the country in more than a decade.

Once complete, the revamp will allow the nation's biggest airport to transport up to 90 million passengers a year by 2031 – the equivalent of nearly double the population of Spain.

There is no suggestion of a fifth terminal being added to Barajas – which was renamed after the first post-dictatorship democratically-elected president of Spain, Adolfo Suárez, who died from Alzheimer's in March 2014.

Madrid's Terminal 4, or T4, opened in February 2006, and the metro line connecting it to the city centre was launched in May 2007.

But even with no T5 on the cards, Sánchez said the plans would bring 'triple benefits' to the capital and, to a certain extent, Spain as a whole: 'Dramatic growth' in 'space and route capacity'; 'thousands of direct and indirect jobs', and 'generate wealth'.

Spain's largest two aviation hubs – Barcelona-El Prat and Madrid Barajas-Adolfo Suárez - are the gateway to Latin America from Europe, with frequent direct flights to the 19 Spanish-speaking countries south of the US-Mexican border, meaning travellers to the region from elsewhere on the continent will almost certainly have to take connecting flights to and from either the Spanish capital or second-largest city.

As well as 'reinforcing' Spain's 'leadership' in European-Latin American travel, Sánchez's government wants to create and develop a similar hub with Asia, offering new, largely direct routes and operating as a base for airlines focusing on the eastern continent.

Describing the plans during a press conference at Madrid's international tourism trade fair, FITUR, which ends on Sunday evening, Spain's president stressed that the works would be structured so as to 'respect the environment'.

In fact, Barajas would become the airport with the biggest solar panel plant on earth, Sánchez assured.

Whilst referring to the increase in employment opportunities the air terminal's expansion would bring, the president drew attention to the newly-released Active Population Survey (EPA) data update.

He said 2023 had been 'a fantastic year' with 'over 780,000 new jobs' created in just 12 months – three times the figure for 2022 – and that those registered as unemployed had reduced in number by 193,400.

Through this, the number of households with all adult members employed has increased by 400,000 in the past year, Sánchez revealed.

“These days, Spain is growing and creating more employment, despite complex conditions and the grim warnings of certain prophets of doom,” the president is quoted as saying.