Madrid Airport Terminal 4, in this recent visitor's opinion, is the simplest way to understand the failure of the grand EU project.
I formed this view at 7am a few days ago, having drunk two overpriced beers in an overcrowded, overlit cafe in said T4. That makes me sound like an alcoholic, which I am not. Technically I was on Mexico time, midnight according to my body's booze clock, and a brace of beers by the witching hour is virtually temperance. Also there were several Russians drinking neat spirits, whilst I stuck to €5 cans of lager. And I had just emerged from a twelve hour long haul flight with Iberia.
The Spanish flag carrier Iberia, in case you have never had the pleasure, is one of the reasons people are afraid of flying. For the first ten minutes of its inflight movie, displayed on a handful of ancient, tiny cathode ray tubes borrowed from the Science Museum, I thought I was watching a 4th Matrix movie, until I realised the TV was turning everything green. Apparently it was a film about a writer, featuring that bloke out of The Hangover. But even though the in-seat sound channels only stretched to four distorted, tinny feeds, I couldn't locate the English soundtrack. My Spanish skills did not stretch to following the plot - especially when everything was turquoise. The second offering was worse: a Spanish language cartoon about a treasure hunter that made Transformers 3 seem like Citizen Kane.
Anyhoo, it was in this sleep-deprived, poorly nourished, under-refreshed state, that I found myself in Madrid T4 (after a great holiday in Mexico, so no need for sympathy). But I worried that if wrote a blog there and then, it might appear to be the ravings of a man drinking beer in the morning, rather than a considered appraisal of the weaknesses of the European Union. With the benefit of sober reflection, I believe my first impression, as first impressions nearly always are, to be entirely accurate.
Picture the scene, if you haven't been there and don't want to use Google Images. Madrid T4 is a vast building, so huge that you think your mind is playing tricks on you, as row upon row of identical chairs stretch away in the distance - like an artist's impression, a CGI virtual tour, only real. Imagine then: hundreds of transit passengers, desperate for food, a coffee, a tea or perhaps a neck massage (such things are available in Singapore airport 24/7 FYI). In this gargantuan Soviet-scale expanse of nothingness, there was but one restaurant outlet open, staffed by three men in their sixties. The queue for bad food and expensive drinks tailed off into the endless expanse of chairs. Plates and trays piled up, uncollected on tables.
As each successive wave of zombified transit passengers converged on this lone oasis, it resembled a well-heeled refugee camp rather than a high-tech airport lounge.
Take a moment to absorb the absolute and total disgrace of this scene. Then remember that Spain has a youth unemployment rate of 60%. This pointlessly over-engineered, over-sized, under-used building must have cost their taxpayers billions of Euros. I say cost the taxpayers; what that means in reality is the Spanish government will have borrowed the money with little if any chance of paying it all back. At some point, the good citizens of Germany will be footing the bill for this monstrosity.
Billions spent on this terminal, 60% youth unemployment, and the only people collecting salaries there were a trio of portly pensioners, whilst hundreds of people waited for service.
Work that needs doing. Young people without jobs. Massive empty building.
That's why Madrid T4 is the perfect summary of the failure of the European Project.
