Spanish airspace reopens after air traffic chaos
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Spanish airspace reopened on Saturday afternoon after 24 hours of chaos caused by a wildcat strike by the country's air-traffic controllers.
The air traffic controllers returned to work after the Spanish Council of Ministers held an emergency meeting on Saturday morning to find solutions to the problem, which had closed all of the country's airspace and airports at the start of a holiday weekend.
Around 330,000 passengers have been affected by the action, prompting the government to declare a "State of Alarm" in the country.
According to the Spanish constitution, the government can declare a State of Alarm when essential services are paralyzed as a result of strikes of collective conflicts.
The government action obliged the controllers to immediately return to work and placed them under military jurisdiction, meaning that a refusal to return to work can be considered disobedience under the military code of justice and lead to a prison sentence.
"The government cannot accept such blackmail. Some of our citizens have suffered irreparable damage that is impossible to justify," commented Spanish Vice-President and Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba.
The vice president added that the present condition would continue, "until the situation is normal again."
The government action took effect immediately and 50 percent of the country's air traffic controllers had reported to their posts by 2 p.m. local time, where they began to work under military jurisdiction.
All of Spain's airspace reopened by 3:30 p.m., allowing the backlog of flights to begin to take off.
Spain's Minister of Public Works Jose Blanco told Spanish television station RTVE that the backlog would be cleared and the situation is expected to return to normal in the next 48 hours.
The state of alarm can last for a maximum of 15 days.
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