Bus drivers' strike paralyses Spanish holiday resort

By MARY BRAID

LONDON - In Gatwick Airport's over-crowded departure lounge last Sunday, delayed holidaymaker Lesley Kirk, a mother-of-two from Northampton, said: "I can't understand how a small group of workers in Spain can cause this amount of chaos."

The bus drivers of Spain's Balearic Islands were striking for a second day in their attempt to force the bus companies to raise a 15 per cent pay rise offer by 2.5 per cent.

In Palma, Majorca, the strike forced returning British tourists to drag their luggage along the airport road and then sleep overnight on air beds and beach mats like refugees in an internment camp.

On the busiest weekend so far in the holiday season, blessed was the returning tourist whose tour representative could commandeer a Spanish taxi with tyres that had not been punctured by drawing pins scattered across roads by the striking bus drivers (in order to protect their picket lines from "scabs").

It was holiday hell for the record 8,000 holidaymakers stranded at Palma Airport as well as the tens of thousands of tourists from Gatwick and Birmingham to Manchester and Glasgow, where the most unfortunate holidaymakers endured 24-hour delays and a night curled up on an airport seat. In fact, more than 1,500 people woke up yesterday morning at a British airport when they should have been in sunny Spain. The majority managed to snatch some sleep in an airport hotel, but at Gatwick 500 people spent the night in the departure lounge.

The news is that the strike, crippling Spain's vital tourist industry, shows every sign of escalating through the summer. Bus drivers have called for indefinite action if their pay demand is not met. And, if last weekend was anything to go by, then the misery strike action will not be confined just to those bound for Ibiza, Majorca and Minorca.

Ms Kirk, aged 39, was a victim of the knock-on effect. "We're going to Cyprus, not Majorca," she said. "But we are delayed by nine-and-a-half hours because our plane is caught up in this, and is not where it should be. We've been here since six this morning to check-in and they tell us we won't be leaving until 6pm. And that's not even guaranteed."

The hardest part was keeping her children amused. Theresa, 11, was absorbed in her drawing - but it was early days. Chelsea, 6, was already bored and asking for her father - who was at a bar watching the French Grand Prix.

However, a West Sussex policeman, Martin George, 39, delayed by at least eight hours of his week-long holiday in Ibiza, was on the side of the workers. "From what we hear, what they are paid is ridiculous." He and his wife Jacqui, 38, head for Spain three or four times a year. "The tour reps always ask you to tip the bus driver," said Jacqui. "They say they exist on tips."

Ian and Sarah Amis, due to fly out to Minorca from Gatwick for a week's break with their baby son Cameron, waited for their plane for 14 hours but then gave up and returned home. "The boarding time kept being put back further and further, and no one would tell us what was going on," said Mr Amis, 33, from Eltham, south London. "And no one had a clue what would happen to us at the other end ... the reps did not know what to do."

Lack of information was a common complaint. "It has been absolutely awful," said Michelle Fowler, 26, from Southend-on Sea, who was due to fly to Palma on Saturday but remained at Gatwick yesterday morning. "We feel like we have been abandoned. They haven't told us anything."

If the tourists are stressed-out then pity Spain's tourist industry, by far the country's greatest earner. Some 500,000 holidaymakers were affected by the weekend's action, while a devastating blow was delivered to the reputation of one of Europe's top holiday destinations. The industry's biggest nightmare is that millions of Brits, Dutch and Germans who booked holidays in the Balearics in August will simply cancel their reservations, calculating that it is not worth the stress and uncertainty.

If the bus drivers succeed in persuading the island's 1,500 taxi drivers to stay at home in solidarity, then the island will be paralysed at the start of peak season. But the taxi drivers will take some convincing; in return for ferrying tourists in small groups to and from their hotels, they have each been earning up to £500 for a 12-hour day. Industrial strife may increase and this weekend's chaos may simply be a taste of what is to come.

- INDEPENDENT