Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport — Alicante, Spain

The poet Miguel Hernández, born in nearby Orihuela and known for verse written partly while imprisoned under Franco's regime before his death in a Spanish prison in 1942, gives his name to the airport serving Alicante and the Costa Blanca region. At 142 feet above sea level, the airport gets by on one runway that still processes one of Spain's higher passenger volumes, thanks to British, Irish, and northern European travelers bound for Benidorm and the wider Costa Blanca coastline. Alicante itself combines a historic old town beneath a hilltop castle with a modern beachfront, giving it more character as a standalone destination than some of the purely resort-driven towns nearby. The airport's renaming to honor Hernández came relatively recently, part of a broader Spanish effort to recognize cultural figures who suffered under the Francoist regime. Charter and low-cost carriers dominate the schedule here, with traffic peaking hard in summer months and easing considerably in winter, though a meaningful population of foreign retirees living along the coast keeps year-round demand steadier than at some purely seasonal Spanish airports. For the whole Costa Blanca region, ALC functions as the essential air link to the rest of Europe.