Hours before the start of the fourth day of partial strikes by the workers of the security company, Eulen, at Barcelona's El Prat airport, the Spanish government, owner of the infrastructure, decided, at last, to convene a crisis committee with the presence of the minister of Public Works & Transport. Whilst on Monday prime minister Rajoy, after his audience with King Felipe in Mallorca, showed a surprising disregard for the serious problems in Barcelona and said that it was a one-off problem, just 72 hours later, it is now very possible that the state will put the work of those on strike in the hands of the Civil Guard.
Whether or not this is the solution, it is up to the Spanish government to resolve the original problem, since the responsibility for Spanish airports, El Prat included, is theirs. Either way, this ending could be seen coming several days ago, and the reaction of the minister of Public Works & Transport has hardly been fast. Neither has there been the right approach to the problem, nor information passed to superiors, nor enough pressure exerted on Aena, in order to get away from a conflict provoked by concessions given to companies that offer services for a price well below what is considered normal.
It would be a mistake to transform the problem at El Prat into an issue exclusively between a company and its workforce. Normally, when there is a work problem, the first people interested in resolving it are the workers, but in the decisive vote on Thursday 176 of the 420 workforce attended, about 41%. Very few, considering the seriousness of the conflict.
It is true that it is a very visible problem, and one that the Catalan Department of Labour has tried to mediate, but the question in the background is how a semi-public company awards its tenders and appoints subcontractors. Aena seeks maximum profits for its shareholders - the state still has 51% of the shares, despite making a hasty sale of the other 49% in 2015 for more than €4.2bn - in an operation that analysts considered very low, arguing that they could have gained €3.4bn more. Six months after the stock market, the share value increased by 82%, and the private shareholders - two banks and two funds - had recuperated their investment.
Focusing on the problem at Eulen and its workforce is an error when there is a player at the root of the conflict, and with El Prat bringing in more than 50% of the increasing profits of Aena.