Air and Maritime Transport in Spain: History and Evolution

Air Transport in Spain

It started in 1919. In its early days, it was devoted to postal transport, and commercial lines were put into operation between Seville. Later, international flights to Lisbon, Paris, and Berlin were opened, until it crossed the Atlantic in 1926.

Before the Civil War, the first carriers had been founded. The air traffic growth and progress experienced by aviation in World War II encouraged international traffic, so the office was established in Barajas.

The generalization of jet aircraft to replace the propeller allowed the birth of a new era characterized by increasing the carrying capacity of the equipment, increased flight range and cruise speed, cheaper cost, etc. This affected the ease of long-distance travel and benefited Spain as a major tourist destination.

Spain has a wide network of airports, which highlights the Madrid-Barajas airport. Other important airports are in Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Malaga, and the Canary Islands. Overall, the network is too dense, costly to maintain, and underutilized.

Maritime Transport in Spain

The Iberian Peninsula has the right conditions for shipping. Because of its location between two seas and two continents, it has been a bridge and place of concentration and dispersion of people through its ports, which have enjoyed great commercial and cultural influence. These ports have been benchmarks to determine the location of major cities on our coasts.

A network of merchant, passenger, and fishing ports has been set up, which has served for the land exchange between overseas and inland.

• The transportation of people was boosted by our relationship with America after the Civil War, coinciding with Spanish emigration. Then it declined.
• The importance of freight ships has increased due to the increased transport of bulky or heavy goods and the importance of the transfer of oil to refineries located in coastal areas. This has evolved into large ships, which has caused a shift in importance to the ports of the Atlantic Ocean to the detriment of the Mediterranean ports.

River transport, with only one inner harbor (Seville), is of great historical significance since ancient Roman times and was no less important in traffic with the Indies.