Defense laid groundwork in August for air-tower takeover

A pact to militarize Spanish air-traffic control towers was formally set into motion back in August - more than three months before it eventually happened - when the Defense and Public Ministries signed a formal protocol outlining how such a move would be carried out, it has emerged.

New details of the government's months-long preparations counter arguments by the opposition and the air-traffic controllers that the Cabinet was improvising when it invoked the "state of alert" on December 4 - the day after tower workers staged a wildcat strike that crippled Spain's air-transport system.

On August 20, Defense Minister Carme Chacón and Public Works Minister José Blanco signed a protocol that specified in writing the responsibilities of carrying out a provision of the 2003 Air Traffic Safety Law to guarantee that Spanish air space wouldn't be completely closed off should the government decide to invoke that clause, which had never been implemented before.

However, at the time, neither Chacón nor Blanco ever imagined a situation like the one on December 3, when the covert strike left some 700,000 passengers stranded at the beginning of an extended Constitution Day holiday weekend.

Meanwhile, the Popular Party has asked for a censure of the government's regional policy chief Gaspar Zarrías for stating that the opposition had met with the controllers last month before the strike.

Zarrías, who stood by his statement, said he made it in response to PP spokesmen Estebán González Pons, who offered to mediate the conflict because the Socialist "government wasn't capable."