Once again, MAD was a joke. Seriously, I am really tolerant, but the environment there...
We got a slot due to "environmental reasons" (20 mins late). Once we got there, we found our that the only possible "environmental reason" was the closure of one of the arrival runways...
Last Saturday we went there, two runways closed. Ground staff told us that it was propably due to the planned flights of the LH A380 to PMI. MAD would surely be one of the diversion airports and was appearently not ready to accommodate the A380. That is what they told us... Anyway, everybody got a slot, due to airport restrictions. Things is that you can not improve it when ready, as Slots are handled by Brussels, but ATC will not send a ready message, due to the fact that it is a local restriction. So no matter who was ready or not, everyone had to wait for a slot that was given without any sense. Some aircraft had to wait for nearly 2 hours, while others didn't make their slot. Aircraft that also had restrictions en-route where not allowed to send ready messages as well... It was totally ridiculous and many people complained.
Once at the runway (at slot time), we had about 15 !!! aircraft waiting at the same time. Interestingly many of the Iberia aircraft did not have slots or did not care, as we insisted in over-taking others (due to slot...) and it worked. TWR controller was a poor chap, but did not seem to have a plan who goes first and so on.
You know when someone says: "Hey, its Africa!". Same goes for Madrid...