Map of Airports in Spain and Portugal

This map shows airports in mainland Spain and Portugal and the Balearic Islands, but not the Atlantic islands: the Canary Islands, Azores and Madeira. Aerodromes for recreational aircraft and other small airports are not shown, either, though one or two airports shown here are not connected by regular routes. In other words, practically all the airports on this map are accessible by commercial routes, most via a single connection at Madrid or Lisbon.

Madrid is the most important gateway into Spain. It has three airports, Barajas, Torrejón, y Cuatro Vientos, though only the first of these being important as an international airport. Madrid-Barajas has direct connections with major cities on every continent except Oceania, and is very likely to be where you will change planes if you are going to or coming from Central or South America. It is the largest airport in the world in terms of terminal size, though London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle exceed it in amount of traffic in Europe. Its new Terminal 4 is vast, designed by the same architect responsible for Heathrow's Terminal 5, and seems to work much better than the latter (at least, I quite like it).

Barcelona Airport is the next busiest in Spain. Though more local in scope than Madrid, it too has flights to and from every continent except Oceania, and is considered one of the European airports with most growth potential.

Lisbon's Portela Airport gets not much more than a quarter of the traffic of Madrid-Barajas, but that still makes it one of the busiest airports in the south of Europe and the fact that it is surrounded by built-up land means there is no room for expansion. Consequently, a new airport is being planned, though at this stage, the plans are little more than an announcement that it will be built at Alcochete, south-east of Lisbon.

Spain and Portugal's other airports are mainly destinations, in the sense that they are places people go to rather than come from or change planes at. In descending order of size, the next most important (all in the top 100 busiest airports in Europe) are Palma de Mallorca, Málaga, Gran Canaria, Tenerife-Reina Sofia, Valencia, Lanzarote, Faro, Girona-Costa Brava, Ibiza, Fuerteventura, Seville, Bilbao, Tenerife-Los Rodeos, Porto, and Minorca.

The "new" airports being opened up by low-cost airlines attracted by lower costs are to an extent changing this (most of them are not new at all, of course, except for international travel). Jerez la Parra, for example, is a gateway to the entire Atlantic coast of Andalusia, the Costa de la Luz. More than a way to get to the pilgrimage destination of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago Airport is a point of entry into Galicia. Valladolid itself is of only minor interest to visitors, but Valladolid Airport opens up the entire region of Castile and León. And so on.

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