Madrid–Torrejón Airport

Madrid–Torrejón Airport is a commercial airport in Spain. It is a joint-use facility between the Spanish Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Public Works. The civil part is dedicated primarily to executive and private aviation. The military part (Torrejón Air Base) is the base of several combat, logistics and electronic warfare units of the Ejército del Aire, the Spanish Air Force, among them the 12 Combat Wing with F-18 planes and the official planes of the President of the Government of Spain and the King of Spain. It is also the base of the European Union's Satellite Centre (EUSC). The airport was formerly home to US Air Force Torrejón Air Base. The airport is located 24km northeast of Madrid, 5mi west of Alcalá de Henares, and 1mi NE of Torrejón de Ardoz.HistoryAs the time approached in 1987 for the renegotiation of the existing base agreement, which had entered into force in 1983 for a five-year period, pressures mounted for a reduction of the United States military presence in Spain. Communist political groups and elements of the PSOE had campaigned against the bases. Moreover, the base agreement had become a symbol of United States cooperation with the former Francisco Franco regime. It was important to many Spaniards to eliminate vestiges of this history by converting Spain's long-standing bilateral relations with the United States into a multilateral undertaking through NATO.