Ryanair announced yesterday its intention to close its Santiago base for the 2025 Winter season, cancel all flights to Vigo and Tenerife North, keep its Valladolid and Jerez bases closed, and reduce capacity in Asturias, Santander, Zaragoza, and the Canary Islands. These decisions are part of its plan to reduce capacity by 41% in the Spanish regions (approximately 600,000 seats) and by 10% in the Canary Islands (approximately 400,000 seats). The airline attributed this decision to airport charges imposed by the operator Aena (Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea), which it deemed "excessive and uncompetitive" and "set to increase further following Aena's latest brazen decision to impose a 6.62% increase starting next year, the highest in over a decade, despite the monopoly operator having returned to profitability this year", as the airline stated in a statement. According to the carrier, the consequences of the closures would be "a loss of investment, connectivity, tourism, and jobs in regional Spain, as many routes will become economically unviable".

Aena president and ceo Maurici Lucena responded to Ryanair's accusations in a statement, calling them "dishonesty in their communications policy". "Ryanair's constant defiance of the Spanish airport regulatory framework and Aena's airport network model, considered a success story by experts around the world, is not an isolated case", he explained in a statement. "This is, in fact, Ryanair's modus operandi in all the countries where it operates, where it exerts constant public pressure on central and regional governments for short-term financial gain at the expense of taxpayers' money and the long-term sustainability of the airport system". "In accordance with the regulatory framework for Aena's activity (the basis of which is Law 18/2014) and the mandatory application of objective mathematical formulas", the statement continues, "Aena has proposed a 0.68 Euro increase in airport fees in 2026. Everyone knows that a person's decision to fly or not depends on whether the ticket will cost 68 cents more next year, yet Ryanair repeatedly insists on the opposite, while it itself has brazenly increased its airfares by an average of 21% over the past year". Ryanair's claim that it is cancelling routes at these airports due to exorbitant fees is therefore false", the statement continues. "The reality is more prosaic: Ryanair is canceling them because it is moving its aircraft to airports where it can charge higher prices for its air tickets and thus earn more, such as at major Spanish airports (despite airport fees being substantially higher than at regional airports). This economic reality is currently exacerbated by the fact that there is a global problem of delays in the delivery of aircraft purchased by airlines (a supply-side constraint).