‘Enough’: Ibiza rises up against plan to nearly double its airport’s gates

A VIP lounge is expanding alongside boarding gates that Aena says exist purely for ‘security reasons’, and Ibiza residents say the contradiction speaks for itself. On Sunday September 20, young islanders, architects and environmentalists march against a €267 million airport plan they believe is really about more passengers. 

Ibiza airport’s departure boards could look very different within a decade. Aena, the state-owned operator, plans to raise the number of boarding gates from 17 to 32, adding eight new airbridges as part of a project valued at between €230 million and €267 million.

The company says the work answers new European rules requiring a clear split between Schengen and non-Schengen passengers, alongside tighter security and border checks. “We are not carrying out any works on the airfield. The number of take-offs and landings will remain exactly the same as it is today,” said Javier Marín, Aena’s executive vice-president, when the project was first outlined in detail in July.

Why a VIP lounge upgrade is fuelling suspicion 

Marga Torres, president of the Asociación Jóvenes de Eivissa (Ibiza Youth Association), is not convinced. She points out that Aena is expanding its VIP lounge at the same time as adding gates it insists are only about security.

“We don’t see any sense in justifying more boarding gates on security grounds while also expanding the VIP lounge,” Torres said. She linked the timing to United Airlines’ recently announced nonstop flights between New York and Ibiza from 2027, arguing that the gates, the VIP works and the new transatlantic route all point the same way: towards more passengers.

Leaked planning papers point to a bigger goal 

Residents’ suspicions gained fresh weight as well this month as licensing documents obtained by Periódico de Ibiza on September 17 set a target of more than nine million passengers a year, approaching 10 million, as part of a wider €500 million package of 55 works planned across the airport.

That is a notably more expansive goal than the terminal-only, no-extra-passengers message Aena’s executives have given in public. Joan Carles Palerm, president of the environmental group GEN-GOB, said “the most serious impact will be on a global scale, from a possible increase in passengers.”

Architects, environmentalists and young islanders unite 

Sunday’s demonstration draws an unusually broad coalition for Ibiza. Alongside the Asociación Jóvenes de Eivissa and GEN-GOB, the island’s official architects’ body, the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de las Illes Balears (COAIB), the water-focused Alianza por el Agua (Alliance for Water) and the Asociación de Vecinos Rafal Trobat neighbourhood group have all added their names.

Not every voice is calling for the project to be scrapped outright. Rafa Tur, spokesperson for Rafal Trobat, said: “We have to update the infrastructure we already have,” pointing out that the current terminals are not built for the traffic that already exists. 

Ses Salines park sits in the expansion’s shadow

Part of the objection is environmental. The airport borders the Ses Salines natural park, a protected wetland straddling Ibiza and Formentera, and campaigners fear construction work, extra light and noise, and any resulting rise in flights could disturb its bird life and already-stretched water table.

Housing and water pressures were already stretched

Behind the specific gripe over gates and lounges sits a wider, more local strain too. Ibiza’s roughly 168,000 residents already share their island with more than nine million air passengers a year, a figure Aena itself expects to climb to 9.7 million by 2031 even without the pier expansion. 

The Balearic government has faced growing pressure over exactly this kind of rise; opposition parties have separately proposed capping the islands’ total visitor numbers at 17.8 million a year. Housing shortages, water restrictions and packed beaches, recently visible in the shift towards visitors bringing their own food and drink rather than spending in bars and restaurants, have left many islanders primed to read any airport growth as more of the same.

For Torres and the groups marching on Sunday, the airport works have become a test of whether islanders get a say before the construction actually begins. “We also have the right to decide, and to be taken into account when planning what happens in our own territory,” she said.