An elderly foreign lady, a passenger from Vueling, cries in disconsolation in front of one of the counters of the low-cost airline in Ecuador on a day in which the T1 terminal of the Barcelona airport plans to operate more than a thousand flights. The old woman, visibly distressed, is one of the 18,000 clients of El Prat who will suffer this weekend the consequences of the strike of the Iberia land personnel.

In full operation, departure and return of vacations, complaints and the resignation of thousands of travelers are accumulated in the claims posts of Iberia and Vueling of the main terminal of the second busiest airport in Spain. Although this Saturday's situation is far from the chaos that the Vueling operation caused at the facilities during the summer of 2017, passengers affected by the protest of the Iberia squad criticize without ambiguity the lack of information by the company and from the airport of Barcelona itself.

They miss, they say, explanations. They criticize the haste with which they have been notified , through emails in the early morning, of the cancellation of their flights. They suffer uncertainty. They regret the absence on the ground of Aena informants, known in the airport jargon as 'yellow jackets'.

Mónica and Rafa, a couple from Cádiz, say they understand "the motivation for the strike" of employees who claim work improvements, but fail "to have to pay the consequences without being Iberia's clients, and have lost at least one day of vacation, which are only once a year. " Weeks ago they bought a Seville-Barcelona-Brussels route that coincided on the calendar with a black weekend at their airport of connection. Your flight to the Belgian capital is one of 112 canceled by Vueling only this Saturday.

At the end of a row at a Vueling counter - to which Iberia provides the handling service -, the Andalusian marriage is still waiting to be relocated on another flight that will take off the next morning. The company, leader of air traffic in Barcelona, ​​assures them that they have "guaranteed transportation, hotel and food". The two users agree to claim compensation. "We learned this Friday about the cancellation," Rafa laments. "And there is confusion with Vueling's communication, which has upset us. We will claim."

The lack of explanations , the low transparency, is the most repeated complaint among the affected clients of Iberia, Vueling and British Airways, companies integrated in the IAG holding. 80% of Iberia Airport Services workers must meet the minimum services imposed by the Ministry of Development. "In these circumstances, we cannot consider not coming to work," says one of the company's supervisors in T1. "We have this morning the incidents of a strike day, but they are facing and solving," adds another of the Iberia supervisors.

The reimbursement of the amount of the ticket and the change of the date of the flight are the two procedures that are most repeated this Saturday at the Iberia and Vueling counters. In the same area, a Vueling worker admits that he has been "forbidden to speak with the press" and that he is following orders for fear of "losing his job."

The minimum services are being fulfilled. "We do not want to harm customers, but to complain to the company," says the head of UGT in Iberia at the Barcelona airport, Omar Minguillón, who says that two out of three employees who could do so are seconded.

There are about 2,700 workers who require the company to convert fixed-term contracts to landlines, which represent 50%. The secretary general of UGT in Catalonia, Camil Ros, asks Aena to be involved in the negotiation with Iberia. "Where is Aena, I wonder," criticizes the union leader, knowing that the handling conflict has been entrenched for years.

The handling is the name that the services of the land area receive in the sector: billing, shipping, assistance, maintenance or loading and unloading, among others. It is not the first time that handling management leads to problems for customers of the second Spanish airport. In the summer of 2006, a wild strike by Iberia's workforce caused the closure of the facilities and the cancellation of hundreds of flights. The grotesque image of workers invading the track is still in the retina of aviation fans.

In the middle of a line of people affected by Iberia, Barcelona's Carme Ribas feels cheated for missing a flight from Barcelona to Buenos Aires (canceled) and another from the Argentine capital to Montevideo, which she will not be able to arrive on time. "I was flying to Argentina at 1.30 am this morning, but they stopped boarding and, without further explanation, it was passed at noon this Saturday. Why? A technical problem, they said. But I think it was because of the start of the strike ", says Ribas, criticism of the lack of explanations by the airline. "I could sleep at home on Friday night, but I had to pay for the taxi, because the ticket that Iberia gave me was not accepted by the taxi drivers . The Argentines slept in a hotel and nobody knows if we can leave this Saturday or not."

Argentines Mauro and Alejandra and their baby Igor, a young working-class family, are the vivid image of restlessness. "While we were assembling the suitcase, it must have been close to midnight, we saw an email from Iberia saying that our flight to Buenos Aires, which took off shortly after, had been canceled. Neither a call nor an SMS, an e-mail," regret "The airport of Barcelona does not help at all either. It does not accompany or guide the passenger in the midst of this great uncertainty: we do not know yet if we can fly this weekend, but we do know that on Monday we are obliged to go to work."

This Sunday, new strike day.

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  • Vueling
  • UGT
  • Barcelona
  • Argentina
  • British Airways
  • Catalonia
  • Spain
  • Cádiz

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