Casarrubios Proposed as Madrid's Second Airport

Madrid’s second airport takes shape in Casarrubios

At the Casarrubios airfield in Toledo, there is currently an asphalt runway 950 meters long and 26 wide. Transforming it into Madrid’s second airport requires extending that length to 3,200 meters, adding a secondary 1,500-meter strip for executive aviation, and putting €300 million on the table just to start. The project is promoted by Air City Madrid (ACM), a company that recently announced it was seeking investment funds and has just received visits from business associations from Madrid and Toledo.

The context cited by the promoter is significant. Spain closed 2023 with nearly 84 million tourists, of whom almost 10 million entered Madrid via Adolfo Suárez Barajas Airport. It is the capital’s only commercial airfield, and this is where the argument begins.

What will be built, where, and when

ACM estimates that full development will move €2.5 billion over 25 years, including support infrastructure, hotels, and logistics warehouses. Once approved, the airport would be operational within four years and aim for 10 million passengers in its first decade, offering between 40 and 60 new destinations.

The location is pitched as the main selling point: next to the A-5 motorway. Here, precision is needed, as the promoter’s own materials are contradictory. They place it 50 kilometers from Atocha Station and 60 from Barajas Airport, but elsewhere state it is 30 kilometers from the capital. Forty-eight, according to the most repeated calculation in discussions.

Why does Madrid have one airport while London has four?

The most repeated argument is comparative. London maintains four airfields (Stansted, Luton, Heathrow, and Gatwick), Paris three (Charles de Gaulle, Orly, and Beauvais), and Rome two (Fiumicino and Ciampino, about 15 kilometers from the center). Madrid has one. According to data handled by the promoter, this difference translates into an average of up to 700 origins from London or Paris compared to those offered by Barajas.

Within the municipality, other facilities exist, but none serve as a real alternative: Cuatro Vientos, former Air Force base now used for civil-military purposes, and Torrejón de Ardoz, reserved exclusively for military aviation.

Promised jobs and calculated returns

Impact figures are all from the promoter’s side. ACM CEO Javier Ruedas claims that the Community of Madrid valued the project at around 2% of regional GDP when analyzing the study presented in 2018, and that the infrastructure will create 40,000 jobs, expandable to 60,000. The global count managed by the promoter adds up to 63,000 positions among direct, indirect, and induced jobs. For Castilla-La Mancha, estimated profitability by ACM itself ranges between 8% and 10%.

It is worth emphasizing the obvious: these are projections by the promoter, not audited results. For 2041, 18.7 billion passengers are forecast globally and an aeronautical fleet more than double the current size, which is the foundation of the entire business plan.

Ciudad Real, Castellón, and the ghost of airports without planes

The uncomfortable comparison appears naturally. According to data discussed, Ciudad Real had about 60,000 inhabitants when its airport was built and now has around 70,000, in a province with fewer than half a million residents. The result is known: empty runways. On this wound, possible repurposing has been suggested in discussions—film uses, racing circuits, aircraft parking much more expensive than Teruel, aeronautical workshops—and Castellón airport is mentioned as another example of an oversized airfield.

Some also recall that in 1988 there was talk of building an airport in that area, which came to nothing, and others point to the climate: winter fogs in the surroundings, which do not appear in any passenger projection.

Ocaña, Guadalajara, or Puy du Fou in Toledo?

If the problem is location, the answer is not unanimous. The Ocaña airfield is defended as the ideal location: it has highways, space for a long runway, and passes through high-estimulante ilegal rail (AVE) and conventional rail, with the Levante high-estimulante ilegal line crossing to the north, where a station could fit. It would serve Toledo and Cuenca in addition to southern Madrid.

Another stream bets on the countryside of Guadalajara, between El Casar and Yunquera de Henares, flat terrain with few fogs, although worse connected by train. And a third points to Toledo capital, next to Puy du Fou, with the AVE leaving travelers at Atocha in around 30 minutes: practically the same time as from Barajas. The data cited for the southern zone is that between southern Madrid, Toledo, and western Cuenca, easily gather about four million inhabitants.

The announcement that shifts the board: €2.4 billion for Barajas

In the final part of the discussion, the twist that relativizes everything above appears. The Government announces an expansion of Adolfo Suárez-Madrid Barajas Airport with a budget of €2.4 billion. If Barajas grows, the support airfield loses part of its reason for being, and the business shifts to the existing terminal. The doubt remains open: how much of the expansion absorbs the traffic that Casarrubios claimed to capture.

The boycott thesis and Aena’s monopoly

Part of the discussion argues that the brake on the project is not technical but institutional: that Aena, the publicly owned airport manager, would have an interest in preventing growth outside its network and that traffic is oriented towards El Prat and the Catalan axis. These are assertions launched without documentation or resolution backing them, so they remain suspicions, not facts. What is verifiable is simpler: Barajas’ operator is public, and a private airport 60 kilometers away would compete directly.

With these elements, the reasonable question is not whether Spain needs another airport, but who pays for the one that exists, who would pay for the new one, and what happens if traffic does not arrive. For now, in Casarrubios, there remains only one asphalt runway of 950 meters.