Four members of the Futuro Vegetal collective broke into the Ibiza airport yesterday and vandalized a German private jet. The activists arrived with cameras, fire extinguishers loaded with paint and strong adhesive. They accessed the airfield apparently by jumping over the fence that separates the runways from some nurseries and a crop field. They then ran to one of the small jets that were sleeping there and sprayed it with black and yellow paint, rendering it inoperative. At the same time, they photographed and videotaped their protest action to warn of the climate crisis and then glued their hands to the fuselage.
After a few minutes, everything that happened was posted on social networks. Photos and video spread with the virality of any unusual action that is shared on Twitter, TikTok or Instagram and then replicated in digital media. The action, which ended after a few minutes with the appearance of the Civil Guard, has shown that breaking into the so-called "air side" of an airport, the most sensitive, is feasible, although it is not something intrinsic to this airport , since recently similar cases have also happened at the airports of Geneva and Amsterdam.
It is striking that such an action can take place in one of the busiest tourist airports in Spain. It is perhaps surprising that it is on July 14, in the middle of the summer high season and when an average of 45,000 passengers pass through its terminal daily. All users of an airport who travel through the commercial or private flight terminal are subjected, without exception, to exhaustive security controls before boarding. Similarly, employees and crew members who enter the area that includes both the boarding area and the aircraft parking platform must also go through security filters each time they go to their workplace.
The contrast between who can vandalize an aircraft or airport facilities and the exhaustiveness applied to airport users and workers is notable. Security is the argument that justifies a complete inspection of each person when they enter the boarding area: from the random check for traces of explosives to the separation of electronic devices. From taking off your shoes so that shoes or sneakers that minimally cover the ankle go through X-rays to having to carry hygiene products in transparent bags or from the limit of liquids with which you can access a terminal to taking off your belt. These and many more are standards that have been with us for more than two decades in the terminals.
The island's Civil Guard has taken charge of the case this Friday at dawn. According to Law 21/203 on Air Safety, it represents an infraction against the safety of civil aviation and could be classified as serious or very serious, with an administrative penalty of between 45,001 and 225,000 euros.
The attacks in New York in September 2001, in which two planes were used to crash into the twin towers, raised the fixation for airport security to the highest levels. Two months after 9/11, the United States created the TSA, or Transportation Security Administration, a security giant that employs about 48,000 people. The bulk of countries have imitated this increase in control of their airport facilities, although this excess is increasingly branded as part of the so-called theater of security, a concept coined precisely by two Americans: Bruce Schneier and Edward Felten.
The first, a computer scientist, physicist and former employee of the United States Department of Defense, has spent years explaining in conferences and books how costly and theatrical this activity is. He has always defended that the measures prior to 9/11 were sufficient and the subsequent ones have not increased security, but rather have given a sense of security. According to Schneier, the enormous efforts and budget that are invested in these security measures should be directed towards intelligence, investigation and other emergency measures.
