On December 3, Barcelona’s El Prat and Madrid’s Barajas, along with every other airport in Spain, shut down, closing the country’s air space. Air traffic controllers (ATCs) had walked off the job at the start of the country’s longest holiday weekend —a five-day break for some— leaving hundreds of thousands of people stranded, and scuppering an enormous number of vacations. The controllers were responding to a government decree passed that very afternoon —the third this year relating to the ATCs—approving new regulations and the partial privatisation of Spain’s airport authority, AENA. In Spain, so-called “royal decrees” can be passed by a government without prior approval by … [Read more...] about Spain’s air traffic strike: We’ve been here before