In the past few days there has been so much in the press about Castellon Airport that it is difficult to keep track of it. It would appear that Castellon Airport has become the metaphor for waste in Spain.
Adolf Beltran in his article “Una manada de elefantes blancos” in El País claims that the airport without planes of Castellón triumphs in the world as a symbol of waste. He quotes the recent article in the Daily Telegraph “Spain’s white elephant airport 30 milion euros spent on advertising.”
There was the Giles Tremlett article “Spanish politicians 24-metre sculpture prompts accusations of megalomania” in the Guardian reproduced here last week.
And then this weekend in El País there was the rant of Antonio Muñoz Molina “La era de la fealdad” ( The era of ugliness) in which he makes reference to the airport.
“To remind that the sculpture will cost 300,000 euros is without doubt a meanness. Who puts a price on art. And after all that spending is a trifle at an airport that has cost 150 million euros, and will cost 8 million a year to maintain. In the not improbable case that no plane comes to land, the locals can indulge walking bucolically along the runway and admire in silence the sculpture of the artist Ripollés. Perhaps in a thousand years the 20-ton Castellón colossus will be one of the few visible relics of our era of ugliness.”
Another day in paradise 