Spain and Portugal for Visitors

Posted by : John Ross on Jan 09, 2007 - 12:34 PM CrimeAndSafety

I wasn't able to attend to Spain and Portugal for Visitors over Christmas, and it has been undeniably sloppy as a result (it was even offline for a couple of days), so I beg your forgiveness. The only really big relevant story I missed, though, was ETA's bombing of a car park at Madrid Barajas Airport on December 30th, 2006, and you will find more information about that on the next page. Related stories were Spanish premier Zapatero's announcement that the bombing marked the end of peace negotiations with the Basque terrorists, and the subsequent resurgence of ETA-fuelled street violence in the Basque Country. Other Spain-related news of note was the preview release of the report of the International Panel on Climate Change, which should really deter anyone daft enough to be still thinking about buying a property in, say, La Manga (sea levels are set to rise anything up to half a metre in the next century). And it was announced that Spanish house prices rose by less than 10% in 2006, probably indicating the end of the housing "boom."

The ETA bomb attack was huge, over 200 kiilograms of explosive crammed into a Renault Traffic van, and the explosion turned the five-storey Terminal 4 Car Park D into rubble. Although the terrorists made three bomb warning calls, there were 19 casualties and two fatal victims. The devastation was such that it took firemen days just to recover the body of one of the two dead, both, by unfortunate coincidence, Ecuadorian immigrants.

Terminal 4 is Madrid Airport's pride and joy, one of the largest and most impressive in Europe, and has only been in operation for a few months. Its car parks are named from A to F, and apart from the destroyed Car Park D, C seems to have been affected as well, though I am not sure in what way. Aena, the Spanish Airport Authority, says it has so far received claims for over 1,700 vehicles damaged by the bomb.

The Terminal 4 car parks are not provided with any kind of PA system to facilitate evacuation, though they do have a network of sirens.