Even the armed police patrolling Madrid-Barajas airport are wary of the rough sleepers who have turned Terminal 4 into a dosshouse.
‘Be careful,’ a young, clean-shaven officer warned when the Mail visited this week. ‘It can be dangerous here – this is zombieland.’
With an annual headcount of 65million passengers, Spain’s biggest airport has long been used to human traffic.
But Barajas has now turned into a so-called ‘hidden city’ – thanks to the spiralling number of homeless people taking over its halls.
In the past decade, the number of rough sleepers here has swelled from about 50 people to as many as 500.
Recent data has shown a noticeable increase in incidents of drink-related violence, anti-social behavior, and illegal activities in response to this trend. The surge in occurrences includes reports of weapon possession, widespread drug use such as crack cocaine, and instances of prostitution.
It’s not exactly the stuff of holiday brochures and that cheesy 1970s pop hit Y Viva España.
Terminal 4, it seems, is far from a picturesque scene as the day progresses. By 7:30 in the evening, individuals categorized as ‘unauthorized occupants,’ a term delicately coined by the authorities to refer to rough sleepers, begin to settle in for the night.
Barajas has now turned into a so-called ‘hidden city’ – thanks to the spiralling number of homeless people taking over its halls
Chronic housing shortages, spiralling migration and the highest unemployment rate on the continent have seen tensions rise across Spain
The occupants, typically aged between their early 30s and late 60s, find their sleeping spots one level beneath the check-in area, utilizing whatever resources they have available – whether it be blankets, cardboard sheets, or in some fortunate cases, sleeping bags.
The prime spots are located next to power sockets, where mobile phones can be charged and kettles boiled. Almost everyone has an airport trolley weighed down with battered suitcases and carrier bags.
Among them is a Peruvian woman in her 60s who has been sleeping at the airport for the past year.
‘I got robbed and lost all my documentation, so I have been scraping by and flitting around ever since,’ she says. ‘Basically, the little money I have isn’t enough to live on outside of the airport.’
Others, perhaps with darker tales to tell, are less inclined to talk. But a 67-year-old Spanish man exclaims: ‘I was in full-time employment for 50 years. I lost my job and I’ve no pension left. That’s how I ended up in this situation.’
Trailing off, he adds: ‘The problem here is Pedro Sanchez . . .’
That is Spain’s 53-year-old prime minister – a man who looms large in this increasingly dismal picture.
For the chaotic scene at the airport has become a horrifying illustration of the country’s decline since his socialist government took power in 2018 and which should serve as a disturbing warning to Britain.
By 7.30pm, the ‘unauthorised occupants’ – as the rough sleepers are diplomatically named by the authorities – start turning in for the night
Communications networks were paralysed, transport ground to a halt and panic buyers stripped supermarket shelves bare during the recent nationwide blackout
As any holidaymaker visiting the EU’s sixth-largest economy in recent months will have observed, it is not just limited to Terminal 4.
This week, tourists described ‘watching in horror’ as a homeless man stabbed a stranger in the neck at Palma airport on the Balearic Island of Mallorca.
Carlos Heriberto Beltran Perdomo, a 45-year-old man from El Salvador, who is believed to be among dozens sleeping rough at the airport, later appeared in court over the attack.
But the shocking scenes of poverty don’t end there. Chronic housing shortages, spiralling migration and the highest unemployment rate on the continent have seen tensions rise across Spain.
That’s before we recall the devastating flash floods around the city of Valencia on the southwestern coast, which killed more than 200 people last November, as well as last month’s power outage, which saw hospitals, shops and banking networks wiped out and led to the deaths of three people.
Both events have been widely linked to Spain’s demented, dysfunctional push for Net Zero.
It doesn’t take a particularly keen-eyed observer to see the cautionary parallels with Britain’s Government today.
Sir Keir Starmer and key Labour figures, including Ed Miliband, are intent on pursuing a slyly Left-wing agenda on economics and energy.
For the chaotic scene at the airport has become a horrifying illustration of the country’s decline since the socialist government took power in 2018
Yet these are broadly the policies that Sanchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party has been implementing since coming to power and which are now wreaking havoc.
So how exactly did it all go wrong for Spain? And is it in danger of losing its allure entirely?
As far as Britons are concerned, the attraction dates back to the 1950s and the dawn of the package holiday. With its miles of golden beaches, 3,000 hours of sunshine per year and cheap sangria, Spain quickly became our favourite overseas destination.
Even now, it remains our most popular choice. Of British travellers’ 86.2million journeys abroad in 2023, around one in five (17.8million) were to Spain, data from the Office for National Statistics shows.
But recent anti-tourist demonstrations are perhaps the clearest sign yet that the long-running love affair between Britain and Spain is heading for the rocks – in itself a knock-on effect of the country’s major domestic problems.
By far the biggest issue has been housing. Rents have risen by 74 per cent nationwide over the past decade, figures show.
Almost half of tenants spend 40 per cent of their income on rent and utility bills compared to the EU average of 27 per cent, a recent Bank of Spain report reveals.
While social housing makes up just 2.5 per cent of Spain’s domestic property stock, some 3.8million homes – 14 per cent of the total supply – are vacant, largely after being snapped up by overseas buyers.
Tensions have grown over Spain’s unemployment rate which – at 11 per cent – is the highest in Europe
These concerns have played a major part in the anti-tourist protests which have exploded this year in Barcelona, the Balearic Islands and, just last week, in the Canary Islands.
Indeed, Sanchez yesterday confirmed he would push ahead with plans to hit Britons with a 100 per cent tax when buying holiday homes since – by his own admission – ‘we are facing one of the largest problems our society is currently confronted with’.
Elsewhere, tensions have grown over Spain’s unemployment rate which – at 11 per cent – is the highest in Europe. This is even worse among the under-25s, more than a quarter of whom don’t have a job.
Jorge Calero, a credit controller from Madrid, explains the rage: ‘Lots and lots of people in Spain are not in a good place. The housing situation is a real disgrace. It is really difficult to get a place to live. I’m not too far off 30 and I have to share a place with three other guys. I really don’t see a time when I will be able to afford a home of my own.’
He adds: ‘I’m lucky that I have a job. I know plenty of people who are well qualified and genuinely want to work, but they just can’t get anything that is even vaguely suitable.
‘And the wages in most sectors are pretty low. The cost of living in Spain might not be as high as other places, but you still need money to live.’
Migration, too, has become a crunch issue, with Sanchez unveiling plans last October to make it easier for migrants to integrate into the labour market and cut red tape for residency applications.
Now, of the 49million population, nearly one in five was born abroad and close to 900,000 come from Morocco.
Of British travellers’ 86.2million journeys abroad in 2023, around one in five (17.8million) were to Spain
But while the Spanish public has traditionally taken a liberal approach to the incoming population, a poll commissioned by the Left-wing El Pais newspaper last October found that 57 per cent believe there is now ‘too much’ immigration.
It all paints a dismal portrait of Sanchez’s political stance.
His drive for Net Zero came under the spotlight internationally after the blackout, which saw mainland Spain and neighbouring Portugal plunged into mayhem.
Communications networks were paralysed, transport ground to a halt and panic buyers stripped supermarket shelves bare.
This week, claims emerged that officials had ‘covered up’ evidence linking the 23-hour outage to Spain’s reliance on renewable energy. More than half of the country’s electricity is now generated from solar and wind.
One of the green push’s few dissenters is Jordi Sevilla, who served as chairman of Red Electrica, which runs the national grid, until 2020.
He says that the current government’s plan for the grid has involved ‘too much renewable messianism’ and ‘turning a deaf ear to the technical problems associated with such an important change in Spain’s energy mix’.
Another expert, Antonio Turiel, of the state-owned Spanish National Research Council, warns that the system is vulnerable due to the ‘haphazard integration of a host of renewable systems’.
This week claims emerged that officials had ‘covered up’ evidence linking the 23-hour outage to Spain’s reliance on renewable energy
Indeed, just this week, EU sources told the Daily Telegraph that authorities had been conducting an experiment before the system crashed to investigate how far they could push the country’s reliance on renewables before Spain phases out its nuclear reactors from 2027.
If that wasn’t alarming enough, Red Electrica is currently overseen by Beatriz Corredor, a political ally of Sanchez who has no previous experience in the electricity sector and whose reported six-figure salary is six times higher than that of the prime minister.
Yet, despite these misgivings and cover-up claims, there is no sign of any let-up in Spain’s relentless drive for renewable energy. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The authorities are determined to cover 81 per cent of the country’s electricity demands using green power by 2030. For his part, Sanchez is resolute. ‘In Spain, the future of energy lies in other sources such as hydroelectric, solar, wind and green hydrogen,’ he has declared. ‘Renewables are not only the future; they are our only choice.’
Four hours from Madrid, I visit Valencia, the country’s third biggest city.
As well as its pristine beaches, aquarium and 13th-century cathedral, it is home to the Requiem in Power project: a plan to create the country’s largest urban solar farm by carpeting three cemeteries with 6,600 photovoltaic panels.
More than 800 of these unsightly metallic panels – each covered in cells which absorb sunlight to convert into electricity – have already been slapped over the top of window-sized ‘nicho’ graves lining the cemeteries’ walls.
None of the relatives of the deceased were asked about what they thought about the project before work started because, according to city official Carlos Mundina, the graveyards are ‘publicly owned’ and the authorities ‘don’t need to consult anyone’.
More than half of the country’s electricity is now generated from solar and wind
But it doesn’t stop there. In the southern rural province of Jaen, 100 olive farmers have been forced from their land to make way for a 900-hectare solar park.
The plan, which will see 40,000 olive trees cut down, has already sparked outrage – as Natalia Corbalan, the spokeswoman for agricultural lobby group SOS Rural, tells the Mail.
‘We’re seeing farmers who have no say whatsoever and are being forced to hand over their land,’ she says. ‘We’re not talking about farmers who are willingly giving up their lands on promises of money for the next 30 years.
‘The energy companies are pressuring them into giving up their land in exchange for an amount of money that is nothing to write home about – around €3,000 per hectare – and are telling them that if they don’t agree to do so, the land will be categorised as land of national interest and end up being expropriated.
‘These farmers can’t sue either because lawsuits are lengthy and costly, and we’re talking about people who perhaps haven’t got the resources to fight against an army of lawyers.
‘It’s David against Goliath, the weak against the strong.’
And the wider repercussions for the country could be even more dire, as Ms Corbalan highlights.
‘When you transform fertile agricultural land to make way for solar panels, the change is irreversible,’ she warns.
In the southern rural province of Jaén, 100 olive farmers have been forced from their land to make way for a 900-hectare solar park
‘We need a system that guarantees us food in extreme situations, like the one we suffered during the Covid crisis, or in certain times of difficulty, like the one caused by the power blackout.
‘If we carry on the way we are, we risk suffering a food blackout.’
All of which paints a gloomy picture indeed for Spain’s once-glittering socialist dream.
And, as I watch yet more rough sleepers preparing to bed down at Terminal 4, I can only hope Britain isn’t next.
