Foreign Minister complains Spain is the only country with 'pedestrian airports'

The Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel García Margallo, has launched a stinging attack on the uncontrolled spending of the regions in the past, describing their ‘absurd costs’ as being responsible for much of Spain’s deficit. He highlighted the ‘pedestrian airports’, a reference no doubt to the 150 million € airport in Castellón which was opened last March and is yet to see its first flight. He said Spain was the only country to have inaugurated ‘pedestrian airports’. He said that the Valencia region had as many as 60 people in Brussels, and said that nearly all the regions had ‘absurd costs’, and noted some AVE high speed trains had only 18 passengers on board. Speaking on Cadena Cope radio on Monday he said, ‘The larger part of the black hole belongs to the autonomous communities and it is the responsibility of the regions, but also of Central Government, to respond to the obligations being imposed by Brussels, and it is in agreement with the Constitution to have the power of controlling the economics and the general horizon of the public hacienda’. He lamented the fact there is an ‘incomplete law of financing’ and said that the previous Socialist government had failed in its responsibility ‘to control the autonomous regions’