Infrastructure in limbo as Spain Struggles with Cutbacks
June 28th | The Sydney Morning Herald

IN MARCH, local officials inaugurated a new airport in Castellon, a small city on Spain's Mediterranean coast. They are still waiting for the first scheduled flight.

To justify the grand opening, Carlos Fabra, the head of Castellon's provincial government, argued that it was a unique opportunity to turn an airport into a tourist attraction, giving visitors full access to the runway and other areas normally off-limits.

Castellon Airport, which cost €150 million ($203 million), is not the only white elephant dotting Spain's infrastructure landscape. Spain's first privately held airport - in Ciudad Real - was forced into bankruptcy proceedings a year ago because of a similar lack of traffic.

Across the country, nearly empty toll roads are struggling to turn a profit. Other projects are surviving only with continued public financing, which has been cast into doubt by Europe's sovereign debt crisis.

Over the past 18 months, Spain has been in the line of fire of investors after permitting its budget deficit to balloon during a long property bubble, which finally burst alongside the global financial crisis. To clean up the mess, the Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero introduced austerity measures last year that, among other things, shrank spending on infrastructure. That has left some projects in limbo, despite political pledges to keep them alive.

Having opened its first high-speed-train line between Madrid and Seville in 1992, Spain overtook France in December as the country operating Europe's biggest high-speed rail network, covering just over 2,000 kilometres.

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