The Town Hall of Elche have proposed to change the name of Alicante airport - used to fly into Benidorm by the majority of holiday makers, much to the anger of local residents.
Although geographically it is situated in Elche, it lies within the town of El Altet - hence the name. However, for reasons probably only logical to those at the Town Hall they want to spend money re-naming the airport to "Elche-Altet"!

Most Spanish airports have the name of the town they are located within and not the province - such as "Barajas" for Madrid and so understandably El Altet residents are unhappy having supported the "negative impacts", ie noise and pollution caused by the airport for over the last 40 years to not have their towns name in recognition.

To add insult to injury, if the Generalitat and AENA, the airport operator do not fund the cost then it will be passed on to the tax payers of the town, which is estimated at fifty thousand euros! I really do think that surely they must have better things to spend their time and money on... as the saying goes "If it ain´t broke don´t fix it"

Old terminal - now boarded up and abandoned

If it does go through I can´t see that tour operators and airlines are going to change the name on their online booking destinations - for one it would totally confuse people to be ticking "Elche" as they would think it is somewhere totally different!

The old terminal, which you pass en route to the new futuristic glass fronted terminal stands abandoned and boarded up - what a waste of money! They even built a second terminal to the side of this old one and both are now left empty - surely they should be thinking of ways to generate money from these rather than arguing about re-naming the airport?

As the busy holiday season approaches, remember that the police are out and about at the airport looking out for "illegal unauthorised taxis"! They have numberplate recognition cameras and the "legal" taxis are only too quick and willing to point out to the police the regular unlicensed ones.