Originally Posted by Easternwiseguy
Is it just the UK that retains ALDIS in the Tower?
Nope, spanish towers also have them.
Back on topic, the event seems pretty straigthforward and as pointed out before, errors do happen ... on both sides of the radio. Fortunately these kind of things do tend to happen when it's a bit quiter on the frecuency (and I assume this was the case as the atcos weren't aware they had a plane about to land) so no great safety risk this time.
As for the supposed horrible attitude of the controllers I can't really fault them from what I read from the article. First of all you all know that safety reports are mandatory and not aimed to blame anyone but to identify problems and resolve them before they turn into an accident. This was a serious (in terms of possible consequences) error and therefore they had to report it, no matter what explanation the captain could have offered.
This is especially true during the time when spanish atcos had military supervisors next to them on duty and were subject to military law.
In any case take that report with a grain on salt... CIAIAC does not have precisely a sparkling reputation and has been repeatedly pointed at for always placing the blame on the pilot/atco while never finding anything wrong with Aena... see the report on the spanair accident in Madrid, for example.