Just watching top gear and wondering where they are ?

The airport is near Valencia and is just one of the symbols of Spain’s ridiculous overspending.

Just seems really weird to have an airport abandoned

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_Central_Airport

It was also the road to no-where and the empty houses, puts our recession into perspective.

Yup you can see why it’s struggling.

The levels of unemployment is also scary, how the hell do you recover ?

That ghost town is Sesena, just outside Madrid.

I just couldn’t see a town that big being deserted,in say Slough ?

rather glad i don’t live in Spain

When the bubble burst here it really burst! All (and I mean all) Spanish towns have half built houses on the outskirts, Seseña is just a particularly bad example.

I feel i should change the title now

Who was going to live in all of those empty houses anyway? Seems like Ireland where they just built and built as property prices were rising with no actual thought as to who was going to live in them unless everyone was going to own a couple of houses each!

With some of these developments don’t rule out the corruption that is endemic in Spain.How the EU says Rumania must get to grips with its corruption before it is considered an EU member and Spain is allowed to stay in beats me.
BBC Radio 4 did a programme with regard to the empty Ciudad Real airport.

The airport was Spain’s first privately funded airport but was only operational for 3 years.
A subsequent investigation found the backers of the project also owned the construction firms awarded the contracts to build said airport…. paying themselves to build a 1.1 billion euro airport doesn’t make sense until you take into account the (hundreds?) of millions in creative tax jiggery pokery that can and will have gone on with an arrangement like that…. the BBC program alleged it was a project planned to fail from the start but it wouldn’t then matter as those who bankrolled the project would have made their money and run.
Wonder what local government back handers were like for that one!?

I usually like Top Gear but that was depressing. The News=waffling about a silly name for 5 mins followed by driving those 3 cars round several depressing follies and some actor bloke who couldn’t drive faster than another bloke who couldn’t even reach the pedals….

It’s getting weaker by the episode.

The prog was only good I hilighting those projects to me. The lame budget car joke was stretched a bit thin.

i agree it was depressing seeing that, same in Ireland to an extent.

it’s a shame. cos the proper car reviews they do are generally a thing of beauty. Increasingly its more the work of the production team that I watch it for.

They could do the same stunt around all the half-finished tower blocks in Dubai, and using all the luxury cars that were abandoned when everybody went home.

I think abandoning it may improve Slough.

They’re not paying themselves – they are having the banks stump up most of the cash to pay the construction companies. Something like this will have a minimal amount of equity, the rest would be debt-funded. So when it went pop, the “backers” lose a small amount but the banks lose pretty much everything.

I wonder who the target buyers were of those empty houses / flats when they built them … British? Anyone from EU only? 😯

It is indeed everywhere in Spain. My brother in law lives on his own in an apartment complex of 100 apartments outside of Madrid. He was the only off-plan buyer who had the money and the time to complete the purchase whilst the developers ran out of money then put the price up mid-build. All the other buyers lost their deposits and no new buyers could be found. It’s pretty eerie walking round the place but at least the pool is nice and quiet…

The airport near Valencia is Castellon, but its not the one on Top Gear last night. Castellon was ‘opened’ but no plan has ever had permission to land… built by political jealousy and/or dodginess

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castell%C3%B3n%E2%80%93Costa_Azahar_Airport

but the banks lose pretty much everything.

Then the banks go cap in hand to the EU/Government as whats had already happened there for a bailout…

I thought lastnights was one of the best episodes in ages enojoyed watching the supercars and them playing in abandoned city in them.

Hora I still don’t understand why you watch it then complain very weak.

Sorry Drac, I thought it was one of the weakest. This series has been getting steadily weaker by the episode and I’m normally a real TG fan 🙁

Each to your own.

The airport at Castellon was built with a runway that was not wide enough and so never got a licence for planes to take-off and land.The Top Gear crew were here about 4 weeks ago and filmed loads of stuff on the runway in Gibraltar that never got shown.Corruption at all levels is ruining this country and has possibly gone so far that the country will not recover.Here in Coin where I live we have 32% unemployment and nobody seems to have the slightest idea how to change things for the better.The strange thing is that people can still afford some very nice bikes.

I imagine China will open its piggy bank soon and buy up most of the world.
Global domination and not a shot fired.

..was reading something that claimed that the “black economy” was around 32% of GDP. Might explain some of the nice bikes. Saying that, large parts of the country are genuinely suffering. The Govt in Spain are just digging themselves into an increasingly deeper hole, I feel there’s going to be some sort of grand upheaval in Spain, not sure what but there’s a growing number of angry people here.

Drac it was the same joke reworded/referenced throughout an hour.

I watch the old TG’s from 5 or so years back. Some good episodes but very car-focused yet funny/dry humout.

radical move from knob gags to willy/funny-name gags, pretty depressing. Its a shame they dont think a bit of genuine education could be included amongst the entertainment, rather than just pratting about pretending to have stumbled across empty towns/airports. Instead of a bit of lazy xenophobia, they could have made the article more interesting with some actual facts and background. The scenery, cars and photography were all stunning and it would have added to, not detracted from, the rest of the piece.

^ Pretty much says it.

Why do I watch?

Every so often theres a good bit.

A good section in TG for me had the EP3 Type R v ‘new’ Type R.

Also recent that keeps me ‘just incase’; (not) childish but fun Henkel v Spitfire cars. Bonkers but highly watchable. Invented/manufactured cars not for a joke but just because.

Entertaining yet STILL informative:

Its a shame they dont think a bit of genuine education could be included amongst the entertainment,

I thought the damage caused to two, top-end, £100,000+ cars by just driving them the way they were designed to be driven, on a dusty strip of Tarmac was highly educational.
It showed me that, when the Lottery coughs up, I’ll know to avoid the Ferrari and the McClaren, and head straight for the Audi dealers.
Which is what I’d have done anyway, if the money allowed, but it confirmed my preference for the R8 Spyder. 😉

On my last visit to Spain (Leon), it felt a lot more prosperous than my last visit to the UK (Leicester). Se Vende signs were rare and prices about the same as here in SW France. Look around you before you write off foreign lands.

I haven’t watched TG since Clarkson told his viewers to run cyclists off the road and therefore have no view on the latest series. However, I have read some Clarkson articles linked from STW which lead me to believe he could singlehandedly bring about Britain’s socail and economic downfall.

The Stig driving that Blue Jag around town was pretty good i thought!