Quote: 135 earned more than 350,000 Euros, 713 hava a salary that averages between 360,000 and 540,000 Euros.
That's how much you can trust that. Also the infrastructure minister mentioned something like that in an interview with the press, such as that all controllers were earning over 350k a year and therefore the average salary was 300k (how can be the average smaller than the minimum they get? And how on earth he says that in front of many journo's and not one picks up on it? Nobody does math in school nowadays?). And also I believe he was referring to before tax salaries (is the only way he gets close to the real thing and then tax in Spain for that kind of dough goes well beyond 40%).
The minister was just orchestrating a media campaign to get the public opinion against the controllers. Nobody stopped to check if those figures were right cause it was a minister saying that. Politicians don't lie, do they?
Controllers in Spain earned really good wages, no doubt, but it was due to overtime. That was negotiated with the company (to whom it was cheaper to pay overtime than to train/hire controllers). The problem is that the company has built a lot (madrid terminal 5 BILLION, yes with a B as in 5000million €, barcelona 7 Billion €, etc) in the last couple of years and, heyho! they're short of cash. Someone has to pay for that (Not the ones deciding to build such expensive things, of course, after all they call the shots and pocketed millions each).
The story goes deeper than what the newspapers say. Way deeper, if you care to look.