Spain gets tough to end airport strike

Associated Press

MADRID

Spain’s government halted an air-traffic control strike Saturday by imposing an emergency decree to threaten the disgruntled employees with prison terms under military law. Flights resumed, but hundreds of thousands of travelers remained stranded at airports.

By Saturday evening the decree, which never had been used before, prompted 283 of the 295 controllers scheduled to report for duty to do so, Spain’s civil- aviation agency AENA said, and flights were resuming at an increasing pace at airports packed with bewildered travelers.

Spanish air space reopened after being closed with the start of the wildcat strike Friday evening over a work-scheduling dispute, but the government warned that it could be up to two days before airports return fully to normal at one of Europe’s top tourism destinations.

All over the country, people marooned at airports at the start of a long holiday weekend told stories of being herded around like cattle in search of information, sleeping on chairs or floors, resting on check-in weighing scales or propped up against their luggage.

“It’s total chaos,” said Spaniard Rocio Garcia, who had hoped to spend the weekend in Paris. “There are two people attending a line of some 500 people.”

AENA said an estimated 600,000 people missed flights Friday or Saturday because of the strike.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero placed the country’s 2,000-odd air-traffic controllers under military authority in a “state of alarm” order, meaning strikers who refused to resume guiding aircraft in and out of airports faced the threat of jail terms under the military penal code.

Zapatero acted under a constitutional clause that never had been used before and also is reserved for national emergencies such as earthquakes or other breakdowns in essential public services.