Spanish airport sold for £7,000

Much has been written about the ability of canny investors to swoop into Spain and snap up a cheap bargain, thanks to the property market's abundance of supply and the weak euro. Now, though, the bargain hunting has really taken flight with the sale of a Spanish airport at auction for just €10,000 (£7,000).

Spain's Ciudad Real airport, located south of Madrid, was one of the casualties of the country's boom-and-bust years. While some developers were erecting tower blocks that would eventually stand either unfinished or empty, others were building the airport in central Spain as an alternative to the capital city's Barajas. The airport even boasted the longest runway in Europe: 4,200 metres in length.

After its opening in 2008, though, the €1 billion project went bankrupt and closed four years later. Since then, it has become as much a symbol of the recession as Spain's ghost towns: a ghost airport. Indeed, the year that it closed, Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar took advantage of the abandoned site to film parts of his airplane-based comedy I'm So Excited! there, adding to its satirical message.

Now, an international group of investors has successfully bought the airport for approximately 4 per cent of the average house price (€234,000 - Kyero.com, Q2 2015). The bidders, Tzaneen International, are reported by the BBC to be planning to create an entry point into Europe for Chinese companies.