Built at a cost of more than €1.1 billion, the airport was a complete and utter flop, with one Chinese business group trying to buy it for just ten grand back in 2013
It may sound like a Spanish team you might play as on a dodgy football video game, but Real Ciudad is in fact one of the biggest infrastructure disasters of the 21st century.
Built at a cost of more than €1.1 billion, it opened in 2009 and promised to be a major aviation hub that would relieve pressure on Spain’s other airports, as well as attracting a host of low-cost airlines from across Europe.
Instead, it barely survived three years before shutting down completely, and earning the nickname of Spain’s “ghost airport.”
The project was born at the height of Spain’s mid-2000s construction boom, and its ambitions were enormous. Boasting one of the longest runway in Europe at 4.1km, and with a terminal was designed to handle up to ten million passengers every year, investors flocked to what they thought was a safe bet in terms of profitability.
The project was framed as offering an alternative to Madrid, although a direct connection to the Madrid–Seville high-speed rail line was also touted.
However, from the start, it became clear this was to be no smooth ride. Instead, problems popped up everywhere.
Considering it was 200km for Spain’s capital Madrid, few travellers were convinced to make the switch, even if the flights were cheaper. To make matters worse, the high-speed rail station that would have cut travel times to under an hour was never built.
Environmental concerns also delayed its opening for years, further increasing costs and undermining early momentum.
Airlines quickly became concerned about the venture, with Air Berlin, Air Nostrum and Ryanair, who had initially launched routes to the airport, all withdrawing them due to poor demand.
Vueling became the last airline standing until it pulled out in late 2011, leaving the airport without a single scheduled passenger flight just three years after opening its doors.
Unsurprisingly, the operating company had accumulated more than €300 million in debt and filed for bankruptcy the following year. In April 2012, the last operations ceased and the airport went dark.
Things were only about to get worse, however. Despite the billion-euro investment, the site was put up for auction with a €100 million minimum asking price, a fraction of its initial cost. Even with this massive reduction, nobody was willing to make the purchase for anywhere near that amount.
In one widely publicised moment, a Chinese investment group attempted to buy the entire airport for just €10,000, a bid that was swiftly rejected but created a series of humiliating headlines.
After years of failed attempts and legal complications, the airport was finally sold in 2018 for around €56 million, a fraction of what it cost to build.
Ciudad Real reopened in 2019, not as a passenger hub but as a storage, maintenance and aircraft-dismantling facility.
During the COVID-19 pandemic it briefly fwas used to house dozens of grounded jets, but it has never regained the role it was built for.
