For sale: the Spanish airport with no jets and sky-high debts
Victim of the Spanish construction boom to be auctioned off with starting price of just HK$1b
One of Spain's biggest "white elephants", the airport at Ciudad Real in La Mancha, is up for auction at a starting price of €100 million (HK$1 billion) - a bargain, bearing in mind it cost €1 billion to build.
The airport, 160 kilometres south of Madrid, is in mint condition, as it has barely been used, and boasts a runway long enough to land an Airbus 380, the world's largest airliner.
The catch is paying off a €529 million debt. Creditors include several savings banks (€233 million) Air Nostrum (€2.6 million) and Air Berlin (€1.8 million).
Local residents whose property was compulsorily purchased to build the airport are claiming a further €106 million.
The airport drove the Castilla-La Mancha savings bank - a 68 per cent shareholder in the venture - to bankruptcy, but not before it handed out multimillion-euro pay-offs to its directors.
The judge in charge of administering the bankrupt airport has ordered that it be auctioned to meet its debts. If no buyer emerges, it will go to private auction with an €80 million reserve price and after that, to a judicial auction, that is, a compulsory sale.
