It might sound like a Spanish team you could select on a dodgy football video game, but Real Ciudad is actually one of the most significant infrastructure catastrophes of the 21st century.

Constructed at a price exceeding €1.1 billion, it launched in 2009 and pledged to become a major aviation hub that would ease congestion at Spain's other airports, whilst also drawing numerous budget airlines from throughout Europe.

Rather than succeeding, it barely lasted three years before closing down entirely, and gaining the moniker of Spain's "ghost airport."

The scheme was conceived during the peak of Spain's mid-2000s building frenzy, and its aspirations were vast.

Featuring one of Europe's longest runways at 4.1km, and with a terminal engineered to accommodate up to ten million passengers annually, investors rushed to what they believed was a guaranteed profitable venture, reports the Mirror.

The scheme was presented as providing an alternative to Madrid, though a direct link to the Madrid-Seville high-speed railway was also promoted.

Nevertheless, from the beginning, it became apparent this would be far from straightforward.

Instead, difficulties emerged at every turn.

Given it was 200km from Spain's capital Madrid, few passengers were persuaded to make the change, even with cheaper flights available.

Making matters worse, the high-speed railway station that would have reduced journey times to under an hour was never constructed.

Environmental objections also postponed its launch for years, further escalating expenses and weakening initial progress. Airlines quickly became sceptical about the venture, with Air Berlin, Air Nostrum and Ryanair, who had initially launched routes to the airport, all withdrawing them due to poor demand.

Vueling was the last airline standing until it withdrew in late 2011, leaving the airport without a single scheduled passenger flight just three years after opening its doors.

Unsurprisingly, the operating company had racked up more than €300 million in debt and filed for bankruptcy the following year. In April 2012, the last operations ceased and the airport went dark.

However, things were only set to worsen. Despite the billion-euro investment, the site was put up for auction with a €100 million minimum asking price, a mere fraction of its initial cost.

Even with this massive reduction, nobody was willing to make the purchase for anywhere near that amount.

In one widely publicised moment, a Chinese investment group attempted to buy the entire airport for just €10,000, a bid that was swiftly rejected but created a series of embarrassing headlines.

After years of failed attempts and legal complications, the airport was finally sold in 2018 for around €56 million, a fraction of what it cost to build.

Ciudad Real reopened in 2019, not as a passenger hub but as a storage, maintenance and aircraft-dismantling facility.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was briefly used to house dozens of grounded jets, but it has never regained the role it was built for.