ARCHIVED - Corvera airport taken over by Guardia and Murcian government

Regional officials and police sealed off the airport to prevent more goods being removed from the premises

Relationships between the regional government of Murcia and some of the largest and most important businesses in the region are set to deteriorate as the row over Corvera airport intensifies.

Sacyr hold a 60.67% share in the Aeromur consortium, which has just entered bankruptcy protection, the other shareholders being Grupo Fuertes, Montisa, Inocsa, Cementos La Cruz, Cajamurcia and SabadellCAM and has now requested judicial assistance following what it calls the “seizure” of the airport premises by the regional government.

  The airport, and the concession to run it, now belongs totally to the regional government of Murcia:  following the decision on the 15th September to rescind the contract of concessionary Aeromur, the 200 million euro loan which the government had guaranteed in order to ensure that Aeromur received the financing required to complete construction of the airport became the responsibility of the Murcian government and the airport, and its contents, also officially became the property of the regional government.

At the time of the government agreeing to guarantee the loan nobody believed it possible that the airport would have failed to open more than 20 months after its official completion, and nobody ( except the banks who insisted on the loan guarantee) foresaw the difficulties which have assailed the concessionary as it waded through the bureaucratic processes necessary to redefine flight paths, face the issues of shared military airspace and deal with the refusal of Aena to close San Javier and transfer operations to Corvera after a change in central government part way through the project meant that the agreement to do precisely this changed with the politicians in power.

The regional government must now assume the repayments schedule relating to the 200 million euro loan, and negotiate with the banks to find a way of doing so whilst it struggles to reduce its existing budgetary deficit, still one of the highest in percentage terms, in the country.
So technically, it now owns the airport, although the speed of events within the last few days has meant that all of the official handovers which must take place during such a process of transition have not yet been completed.

The government maintains that it has been forced to act decisively as lorries were allegedly seen to be leaving the airport loaded with  items which had been removed by the former concessionary without the authorisation of the “new owner. “

The regional government say they have been attempting to carry out a full inventory of the airport premises, but employees of Aeromur refused to sign the inventory documentation, so the decision was taken to prevent any further goods or materials being removed from the premises.
To this effect, various members of the regional administration, amongst them the Director General of transport,  Antonio Sanchez-Solís, presented themselves at the airport, with the support of the Guardia Civil, and requested that  the keys be handed over.

Sacyr has denounced the situation, and turned to the legal system for support, filing a letter with the Murcian High Court of Justice (TSJ) requesting that the courts be "the person who decides what is done at the airport while the liquidation of the contract concludes".

They express their surprise that the regional government has seen fit to “appropriate” the airport when “there is no urgency for the Community to seize the airport, as there are several issues that are still pending."

On Monday the members of the Aeromur consortium met at the offices of Sacyr in Murcia to discuss the options open to them following the decision to place the company into pre-bankruptcy protection, agreeing unanimously to undertake all legal means possible to recover the contract and seek damages from the regional government. In spite of assurances from the regional government that no damage has been caused to relationships with these major players in the region’s industrial landscape, the regional press reported a spokesman of Sacyr as saying that the former concessinary had no option other than to defend themselves and that the battle with the regional government promised to be a “long one. “

Full list of all archive articles relating to the Corvera airport project