The end of the Easter holidays

Massive queues at the check-in desks, Piled up suitcases on the trollies, the occasional foreigner trying to decipher the panel with the timetable of flights, hectic work rate in the cafes to offer a coffee, tea or snack to the travellers before boarding… The normality was the dominant situation yesterday at Malaga airport.

Normality inside the incessant activity of having to attend all the passengers of the 327 flights scheduled for yesterday’s Easter Sunday (or as the Spanish know it ‘Domingo de Resurrección’ meaning Resurrection Sunday), according to Aena (Association of Spanish airports and air navigation), 6% less than last year that reached up to 350. Yesterday, the companies that operate at Malaga airport had a total offer of 54.666 seats on the day with most traffic of the year so far and the most important of this year’s Holy Week.

It was a return day for the thousands of tourists that passed through the province of Malaga these last few days making the most of their holidays. But also for the people of Malaga that took the opportunity of these festive days to escape to other destinations. At the Terminal 2 information desk we found two Russian friends that were checking their tickets. They spent the whole week travelling throughout Andalusia. “We visited Granada, Seville and Malaga; we enjoyed it very much although the bad weather had relatively ruined our trip”, said one of them while waiting for her flight back to Oslo where she currently lives.

In Terminal 3, we met a group of French tourists that had just spent the last seven days in Estepona and were waiting in the queue to check-in their luggage back to Lille. “It’s the first time we visit the Costa del Sol. we stayed at a fantastic hotel and we managed to visit some wonderful white villages and, of course, Puerto Banus”, they relate, and that only regret not having been able to put on their swimming costumes to spend some quality time on the beach.

There were also many Spaniards going back home after visiting Malaga. Javier Rosado, for example, together with his family, his wife Olivia and daughter Ainara, together with the grandparents of the little girl, were waiting to fly back to Barcelona, where they work. “We have a lot of family in Ronda and we have come down to pay them a visit, but now we must return to reality”, said Javier. Antonio Perez, on the other hand, came from Granada to accompany his daughter Maria del Mar, who is off to study in Rome with an Erasmus grant (European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students).