Almost 70 aircraft and helicopters took part in the flypast to celebrate Spain’s National Day.
On Oct. 12, 2022, at the presence of King Felipe VI of Spain and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Spain celebrated the National Day (or Dia de la Fiesta Nacional). This year’s celebrations marked the return of the parade and flypast over Madrid, with the participation of 68 aircraft and helicopters, 115 vehicles and 2,656 troops.
The parade was opened by a Casa 212 that airdropped two paratroopers, one of those flying a large Spanish flag. Then, the flypast saw a first pass by the Casa 101 of the Patrulla Aguila (the Spanish Air Force display team) with the yellow and red smokes, followed by various formations (17 in total, including some dissimilar ones) of EF-18+ Hornets, SF-5Ms, Eurofighters, EAV-8B+s (of the Spanish Navy), A400Ms, A330, CN235s, CL215s and CL415s, PC-21s, and helicopters from the various services (including the Spanish Army, SASEMAR, Guardia Civil and Policia National).
You can watch the parade again in this interesting video (the paratroopers jump is a the 15:30 mark, while the first flyover of the Patrulla Aguila, can be seen at the 35:00 mark, and the second is at the 50:00 mark).
Along with the footage of the parade that you can replay on the official YouTube channel of the Spanish MoD, some interesting clips can be found online, mainly on Instagram, where some pilots of the Armada published cool videos shot from the cockpit of the EAV-8B+ “Matador”.
Torrejón de Ardoz hosted many of the tactical aircraft that took part in the flying parade. Our contributor Claudio Tramontin flew there and took some nice photos of the aircraft deployed to Torrejon as they launched to join the flypast over Madrid on Oct. 12, 2022, and recovered later on the same day.
SF-5M AE.9-012/23-06
EF-18B+ CE.15-02/15-71
CL-415 UD. 14-01/43-31
EF-18B+ CE.15-12/ 12-75
EF-18M C.15-46/12-04
EAV-8B+ VA.1B-35/01-923
David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.
