After completing their mandatory military service 46 years ago, members of the 1977 and 1978 military groups returned to what was once La Parra Air Base. Today, these facilities house FTEJerez pilot and air traffic control training school.

The group, accompanied by our Marketing and Customer Relations Manager as a guide, toured the premises, which “have undergone a radical transformation, as hardly anything from the interiors of the buildings remains as it was when we served there.” Despite the changes, nostalgia brought back memories: “We felt that longing for our youth, recalling how things were, where everything was located, and what they were called,” they said.

The visit allowed the veterans to reminisce about their past, inspired by the poem The Old Man by Constantin Cavafy: “He knows he is very old, and he feels it and sees it. And yet it seems to him that youth was just yesterday. A short interval, so short!”

La Parra Air Base has a rich history, having been used as a military facility for several decades until its closure in the early 1990s. After its decommissioning, the base underwent significant changes and was repurposed for civil aviation use. In 1999, FTEJerez, one of Europe’s leading pilot training schools, relocated to the site, taking over the modernised facilities. Since then, FTEJerez has been training future pilots from all over the world, making the once military base a key hub for aviation education and training.