Tens of thousands of foreign tourists were stranded at the holiday airports on the Spanish Balearic Islands for up to 24 hours when coach drivers went on strike to demand more pay. More than 500,000 passengers who were due to arrive or leave from the airports of Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza and Menorca over one of the busiest weekends of the year were affected. Flights across Europe were also delayed and Ibiza airport closed for several hours when congestion blocked the airport terminal and runways. Although the strike was due to end last night at midnight, there are fears it could continue into next week.
The 6,000 striking drivers, who hold a monopoly transporting tourists from the airports to their hotels and apartments, are demanding a salary increase of 18 per cent - 12 per cent more than the expected inflation rate - shorter hours and bonuses for loading passengers' luggage. They work a six-day week.
Crisis meetings between the airport authorities and the unions, with the intervention of the regional government, continued over the weekend. A solution appeared close yesterday morning when the employers increased their offer from 15 per cent to 17 per cent, with shorter hours and a bigger bonus for carrying suitcases. But it took a militant group of the strikers less than 30 minutes to reject the offer and threaten to prolong their protest into an indefinite stoppage.
There was heavy police presence, many of them in full riot gear, to prevent picketers becoming violent and to open the road for taxi-drivers. Tour operators contracted every available taxi on the islands and signed up all rental cars, but this was not sufficient. Taxi-drivers were earning up to £2,600 a day.
Picketers tried to prevent cars or buses getting through their barricades. They slashed tyres of rental cars awaiting collection and sealed car-park barriers with silicone to prevent passengers from removing their cars. They scattered nails and drawing pins on the road to puncture the tyres of cars that had succeeded in getting through the picket lines.
Police detained a German resident of Mallorca who set up an unofficial taxi service. When picketers surrounded his car and threatened to smash his windows he fired a pistol into the air. No one was injured, but the driver and six picketers were driven away for questioning.
Tour operators and travel representatives handed out sun beds and inflatable mattresses for the thousands stranded overnight. The army set up tents in the airport car parks to provide shade from the blazing sun, children paddled and swam in airport garden fountains. Red Cross volunteers were busy handing out water to exhausted and dehydrated travellers.
However, trouble is not confined to the Balearics. The national airline, Iberia, which was privatised recently, is facing a pilots' strike tomorrow. It is the second in a series of 24-hour stoppages scheduled for the first Tuesday in the month. The airline has announced the cancellation of at least 300 flights tomorrow, and has warned that delays are inevitable.
There was misery too at Barcelona airport where a cleaners' strike entered its second week. Toilets went uncleaned and waste bins overflowed on to filthy floors.