This has apparently been sitting there for over 10 years, with crosses painted in the runway
It briefly got an impulse when many airliners were parked there (and prob40 still are) which also brought some maintenance/preservation jobs. Other than that, AFAIK it’s really never been used seriously. Only for some freight work I believe.
A piece of bad planning (or proper planning for those who lined their pockets).
OMG, the airport in the middle of nowhere, with flights to and from nowhere. This was a thing already way back when I lived in Spain! As @aart says, perfect planning for those who lined their pockets at the time. I’m not sure if it ever became ‘normally’ operational. It’s one of the many ‘white elephant’ projects strewn around Spain that date back to the crazy early days of the 21st century when cheap money was flooding into the country, construction boomed and corruption was as normal as the morning coffee at a bar. Crazy times.
LERL Ciudad Real is only one example of the lavish spending/corruption (“despilfarro”) of Spain in the 2000s leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. It seemed like the country needed a huge international airport at every regional capital.
There were huge and very optimistic plans for LERL. It was supposed to become “Madrid South” airport, with a direct link to the high-speed train AVE and direct rail connections to central Madrid. Today, when one rides a train from the South to Madrid the bridge that connects the rail station to the airport terminal is clearly visible floating in the air leading to nowhere. Pretty sad stuff.
More examples like this:
- LECH Castellón
- LEMI Murcia
- LETL Teruel (although this one became a very popular aircraft long-term storage
172driver wrote:
I’m not sure if it ever became ‘normally’ operational.
Never. There were a few short lived Vueling and Air Nostrum flights but those didn’t last very long due to low passenger numbers.
The parallel runway doesn’t seem to have any Xs, so I’d use that one 
According to ForeFlight, it’s open, working hours are stated, fuel is available and there’s no closure NOTAM.
It reopened in 2019 and is used mostly for cargo according to Wikipedia.
The airport is open but its target is maintenance and long term storage for transport category aircraft, just like Teruel (LETL) …
General aviation is allowed and they have AVGAS and JET A1.
Right now is a VFR only airport, but Instrument approaches should again be active sometime in the future (this can be a couple of years in “spanish calendar”)
But anyone interested in using it better write them an email to ask for a complete quote for its planned operation to avoid a nasty surprise …
