Shorouk Express
If you’ve followed the news lately, you will have seen that Ryanair and the Spanish government are at war with each other, in the metaphorical sense at least.
The low-cost carrier recently announced it will slash 800,000 seats this summer and scrap or reduce flight routes from regional airports in Spain due to Spanish airport operator Aena’s allegedly “excessive” fees.
Ryanair’s outspoken boss Mike O’Leary has gone as far as calling Spanish Consumer Affairs Minister Pablo Bustinduy a “crazy communist” and used an image depicting him as a clown to promote the carrier’s latest sale.
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Mockery aside, the real victims are flight passengers who regularly fly to and from Asturias, Valladolid, Jerez, Vigo, Santiago, Zaragoza and Santander, as their airports already had few flight routes to begin with.
REVEALED: The flight routes to Spain Ryanair will soon cancel
Fortunately, it seems like there might be light at the end of the tunnel.
The CEO of Spanish low-cost airline Volotea Carlos Muñoz told a press conference this week that he plans to swoop in and replace the Ryanair flights the Irish low-cost airline will cut in Spain.
“If Ryanair leaves regional airports, nobody should worry because there is Volotea,” Muñoz said.
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The company operates from two bases in Spain, Asturias and Bilbao, and sees itself opening a third and even a fourth in the next five years.
“We have very little room to change our schedule for this summer season, but we could take Ryanair’s position for next summer,” Volotea’s boss added, suggesting that it won’t be an immediate solution.
“We believe there is a commercial case for connecting regional airports,” he added, contrary to what Ryanair has said.
Admittedly, Volotea offers nowhere near as many flights to the United Kingdom and Ireland to and from Spain, but it sees itself with the capacity to improve the connectivity of regional airports with other secondary destinations in Spain and Europe.
READ ALSO: Where in Europe is Ryanair scrapping flights this year?
So it seems that Volotea, or rather the affected regional airports in Spain, will need help from other airlines to fill the gap being left by Ryanair. Still, poco a poco (little by little).
In other news, if you have your eyes set on a very sought-after property in Spain, you now have less time than ever to seal the deal.
According to a study by Spanish real estate company Tecnocasa, the average time Spaniards are taking to carry out a property purchase is being sped up by the voracious competition in the market: 73 days on average now.
And if we look at the most sought-after real estate markets, buyers are in an even bigger rush. In Barcelona, the average was only 68 days in 2024, in Valencia it was 67, 66 in Málaga, 62 in Seville, 61 in Bilbao, and in the Spanish capital it’s just 60 days.
Compare this to the average time it took to buy a home in Spain in 2020 – from pinpointing the desired property to signing the title deeds – and the average time was around 94 days.
CHECKLIST: The 15 steps to buying a property in Spain
According to Tecnocasa, 55 percent of Spanish properties have been on the market for less than half a year. Then there are the real winners, which are advertised for just three months, representing 37 percent of the total.
“Properties barely have time to appear on the listings before multiple offers compete for them in a real casting call,” reads the report.
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Of course, then there are properties that don’t jump out, be it because of their location, the state they’re in or because they’re overpriced. Properties for sale for a year or more make up almost a quarter of the total.
The main conclusion the report has drawn is that there’s a clear mismatch between rising demand for Spanish homes and the dwindling supply in the cities and towns where people want to buy.
This explains the rush to snap up the best Spanish properties before another buyer beats you to the finish line.
Rising property prices and rents are pushing people in Spain to act sooner because they see little chance of the market turning around and real estate getting any cheaper.
Therefore, demand keeps increasing whilst supply falls further, a bad combination for prospective buyers in Spain.
“A 39 percent increase in demand in a single year is not normal,” Lázaro Cubero, director of Analysis at the Tecnocasa Group, concluded.
