Free-D

While the village fiestas pass off peacefully, full of drunken horseplay, but free of debauched violence, I wonder what would happen to Salamanca if Ryanair came to Matacan…I know, this is old news, but I feel I have to strike a note of caution in those who are desperately trying to have international flights come into Salamanca airport. I fully sympathise with the sentiment… how many treks have I made to Valladolid or even Madrid? And how much more efficient it would be if only I could take a quick hop and a skip down to Matacan for my flight. I once organised a conference in Salamanca and the poor Estonians took 17 hours to get here. The skies above Europe are becoming busier and the choice greater and there are many lesser cities that are served by local airports. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that the opening of Matacan to international flights would turn Salamanca from a sleepy backwater into a thriving wealthy city overnight and the corresponding effects for enterprise would be far-reaching and long-lasting.

So why do I have misgivings? I can’t even say that it’s ecological concern. No, my worry is simply that the town would not know what had hit it, and the damage could be irrevocable. Most travellers will be aware by now that Ryanair and its rivals peddle in a no-frills flights offered over the internet at what may be seen at first to be unsustainable prices… such as 0.01 euro per flight (they make their money on airport taxes and baggage handling) as well as on the 40% of travellers who don’t book until the special offers have long since disappeared. But there is another aspect to Ryanair: its targeting of city breaks for stag and hen parties. The British Foreign Office estimates that 70% of British stag and hen parties are now held outside Britain. Ryanair find a pretty city, with a good number of bars and relatively cheap booze, then sell the idea of a weekend of debauchery for the price of an English pint. The result, as I described last year after an unpleasant flight from Tallin, is a plane load of hooligans whose only aim is to get drunk and rampage freely without any respect to the local community or heritage. At Spanish fiestas I’m always bowled over by the incredible tranquillity amongst the local drunken youths. I have never once seen a fight in a fiesta, not once. But without wanting to sound too doom-laden, I can guarantee that if Ryanair are allowed to fly into Salamanca all that would change. In Bratislava, one of the more recently recruited destinations, about a quarter of the 600,000 British travellers there end up in some kind of trouble. A sizeable minority of them treat brawling, vomiting and intimidation as an acceptable holiday activity. Now, I ask myself, in all seriousness, is this what Salamanca wants, and more significantly, could the city handle it?