JOAN SERRA MINGOT

 

As we reported yesterday, Spain is still shocked by the death of the former President Adolfo Suarez last Sunday. Many tributes are going on to honor the politician and the last one comes from the Ministry of Development. As proposed by the current President Mariano Rajoy, the Ministery has passed an order which says that the official name of Madrid-Barajas Airport will be renamed from now Adolfo Suárez Madrid- Barajas.

 

"President Adolfo Suárez has played a key role in the history of Spain. His work was essential to complete one of the greatest achievements of Spain as a country: the Spanish Constitution of 1978", the Ministery has highlighted in the note that has announced the change of name.

 

The Mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella, is confident that Madrid will be "happy" with the change because Barajas is an "emblematic” location for both the capital and Spain. Suárez is the second Spaniard who gives his name to an airport, after the poet Federico García Lorca, whose name was added to Granada-Jaén airport from June 2006. Moreover two other figures are associated with the name of their respective airports: Pablo Ruiz Picasso, with Malaga airport, and Queen Sofia , to the South of Tenerife , although in these cases the name is not official.

 

Abroad there are many examples of this kind of tributes: the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Airport in New York, the Charles de Gaulle in Paris , the Indira Gandhi in New Delhi, Istanbul Ataturk , the Benito Juarez in Mexico City, etc.

 

The airport of Madrid has always been called Barajas since it came into operation in 1931. In 2013, moved more than 39.7 million passengers , which makes it the fourth largest in Europe by traffic.

 

 

 

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