I can't tell you are a liar or that it was a one-off occurrence what happened to you because it's been a long time I flew IFR in Spain (and never been an airline pilot), but if that's a standard practice it's unacceptable.
I know they have a bad habit of delaying GA traffic (including bizjets), but I expected airlines to be treated equally.
But even then, I think the guy providing the service is just the messenger, the orders come from above. If I wanted to land at Phoenix Sky Harbor in a DA40 and ATC management said it was not possible, even though the best intentions and wishes of the controller giving the service, I could not have landed there, I don't know if you guys follow me.
I will give you an example... I used to freelance for Flight Precision when they were doing navaid calibration for Aena, and the ones deciding when they could fly, perform approaches, etc... were the APP and TWR bosses and ultimately higher management from Madrid. In all Spanish airports they had a lot of restrictions, while in other countries their job was very easy.
So was it because all Spanish controllers are useless or maybe because the managers didn't want to push it? I'm talking 5-6 yrs ago.
And the amount of pressure we had from Aena management was not easy to bear for me, as I was 22-23 at the time and still fairly naive.
Besides I also worked for Aena in the ARO at LEVX, and in the FBO which involved dealing a lot with Aena staff and management.
So that's why I'm telling you to not really blame the controllers but look a bit further up, because I think I know what I'm talking about.