Saturday August 11. Start of the bridge that connects with the 15th, which is not only a holiday in Spain, but also in many European countries, such as Belgium, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal or Switzerland. In the accesses close to the arrivals terminal of the Alicante-Elche airport, dozens of cars pull over to the shoulder with the intention of waiting for the moment of pick-up of a relative or friend without passing the barrier that barely allows ten minutes to wait and saving the payment of the parking.
Naturally detached and flaunting our Central European civility, we parked in the terminal car park. After a brief walk, we arrive at that Bermuda festival -only the security guards and some older women wear long pants- in which the suffocating summer heat has turned our public spaces, some clustered before the arrivals panel, with the anxious gaze of those who fear a delay, and others in search of the seat that makes the wait easier.
It is rush-hour of a rush-day in the rush-month of tourism in Alicante. Between 6 a.m. on Saturday and 3 a.m. on Sunday, almost 190 flights from 80 locations are scheduled to land. 90% of origin airports are outside Spain, the majority in Europe, except for some in Morocco (Tetouan, Fez and Marrakech) and Algeria (Oran). Only 18 flights travel to the Costa Blanca from the different London airports today.
The United Kingdom -although Tuesday is not a party there- is, as always, the main issuing country: in addition to the abundant London fleet, eight planes come from Manchester, five from Bristol, another five from the East Midlands, four from Birmingham and from West Yorkshire, the same as from Edinburgh and Glasgow, three from Belfast and Newcastle, two from Liverpool, in addition to those that depart from Southhampton, Eastbourne or Bournemouth... more than 60 aircraft loaded with British fleeing their rainy climate.
The longest journey is the 4 hours and 45 minutes that, if everything goes normally, lasts the flight -today there are two planned- between the Icelandic airport of Keflavik and this one located in the Elche district that previously gave it its name: El Altet. The shortest route, the one that connects us with Ibiza, about 45 minutes for barely 180 kilometres, followed by the scarce hour it takes to get there from Oran.
Apart from the British, the airports with the most connections this Saturday, August 12, are those of Brussels, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Madrid (six each), followed by Palma de Mallorca and Oslo (5), Copenhagen (4), Paris, Eindhoven , Bergen, Dublin and Barcelona (3). Due to our insufficient geographical culture, we are forced to consult many of the issuing airports whose location is: Nowy Dwor is a Polish city of 42,000 inhabitants, Hasslo is in the German region of the Rhineland, like Weeze, Vantaa is the airport most important in Helsinki... and there is a flight with Zaragoza, an interesting detail that until today we did not know.
