A group of international investors has won a bankruptcy auction for an abandoned airport in central Spain with a €10,000 (£7,000) offer – 100,000 times less than its construction cost. The investors, a Chinese-led consortium called Tzaneen International, were the only bidders for Ciudad Real airport, south of Madrid.
The airport cost more than €1bn to build and opened in 2008 during Spain's building boom. It was intended as an alternative to Madrid's Barajas airport, but it went bankrupt and closed in 2012. The facility has a capacity for 2.5 million passengers per year but never attracted enough traffic.
However, it is not clear if the sale will go ahead. Another buyer could still step forward outside of the auction process by meeting the minimum price of €28m set by the receiver before the end of September. The winning consortium says it wants to make the airport an entry point into Europe for Chinese companies.
Ciudad Real is one of several 'ghost airports' constructed during Spain's property boom that failed to attract sufficient passengers. Castellon airport in the east, which opened in 2011, received its first flight only this year after years of inactivity.
