Torrejón is a product of the Cold War bargain between Franco’s Spain and the United States. The Pact of Madrid, signed on 26 September 1953, gave Washington the use of Spanish air and naval bases in return for military and economic aid, and ended the regime’s post-war isolation. The Library of Congress country study notes that Spanish leaders soon complained that the supplies they received did not match the value of the bases they had conceded. Torrejón, 24 km east of Madrid on the plain beside the town of Torrejón de Ardoz, was the largest of the new air bases.

According to the official Ala 12 history, the base “entró en servicio el 1 de junio de 1957 como base de utilización conjunta”, a jointly used base. Its first Spanish occupants were the headquarters of the Air Defence Command and a squadron of F-86F Sabres. English-language histories say the Americans built a runway of about 13,400 ft (some 4,100 m) and call it for a time the longest in Europe; that claim is Wikipedia’s and is unconfirmed. Today’s AIP publishes a 3,658 m runway, 04/22, with a shorter 2,752 m strip for military use only.

For its first decade the American side belonged to Strategic Air Command. The 3970th Strategic Wing was activated on 1 July 1957 to support Operation Reflex, in which B-47 Stratojet wings rotated to forward bases because the bomber lacked the range to strike from the United States. On 25 June 1966 the 98th Strategic Wing replaced it with KC-135 Stratotankers for refuelling over the Atlantic, Europe and the Mediterranean, and was inactivated on 31 December 1976. Headquarters Sixteenth Air Force, also at Torrejón, passed from SAC to US Air Forces in Europe on 15 April 1966.

The fighter era began on 27 April 1966, when the 401st Tactical Fighter Wing arrived from England Air Force Base, Louisiana, with F-100D/F Super Sabres. It was an allied unit, not a Spanish one, and for 26 years it hosted rotational fighter detachments for NATO alert duty in Italy and Turkey. Two of its squadrons, the 612th and 614th, went to South Vietnam during the war there, at Phan Rang and Phu Cat, and returned to Torrejón afterwards.

The wing’s aircraft followed the American front line. It moved to the F-4 Phantom in 1970 (the wing’s own lineage page says F-4E; the base article says only F-4), to the F-4C in September 1973 and the F-4D in 1978 or 1979, depending on the source. The first F-16A/B Fighting Falcons arrived on 5 February 1983, and Block 30 F-16C/Ds followed between late 1987 and September 1988; the lineage page gives July 1988. The 612th, 613th and 614th Tactical Fighter Squadrons carried blue, yellow and red tail stripes.

In the 1990–91 Gulf crisis the 612th deployed to Incirlik in Turkey and the 614th to Doha, where it became the first US military unit stationed in Qatar. By then the wing’s days in Spain were numbered. The squadrons were inactivated between 28 June 1991 and 1 January 1992; the USAF part of the base was transferred to Spain on 21 May 1992, and the wing moved on paper to Aviano in Italy without aircraft or people. The official Spanish history dates the last American unit’s departure to May 1993.

The American presence at Torrejón was never merely technical. After Franco’s death the base agreements were renewed as a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1976, and again by executive agreement in 1982 after Spain joined NATO. Felipe González’s Socialist government then put continued NATO membership to a referendum on 2 March 1986; 52.6 per cent voted yes and 39.8 per cent no. The Library of Congress study records that a reduction in the US military presence was one of the conditions attached.

The new eight-year agreement announced in January 1988, the study says, “called for a marked reduction of the United States presence in Spain and terminated the United States military and economic aid”. For Torrejón it meant the departure of the 401st’s F-16s, which had to leave within three years, by mid-1991, and a cut of nearly half in the US forces stationed in Spain.

The base’s neighbours also paid a price in blood. On 12 April 1985 a bomb destroyed the El Descanso restaurant in Torrejón de Ardoz, a place frequented by American servicemen, killing 18 people, all of them Spanish. Of the 82 injured, 11 to 15 were Americans from the base, depending on the account. The Spanish investigation was closed in 1987 without arrests; the Interior Minister, José Barrionuevo, judged the claim of the Islamic Jihad Organization the most credible.

The Spanish fighter line began in April 1958 with 61 Escuadrón and its F-86F Sabres, formed at Getafe and moved to Torrejón in May 1959; it chose a cat as its emblem. In April 1965 a reorganisation made it 161 Escuadrón with 21 F-104G Starfighters, keeping the call sign Tenis. The official history gives the Starfighter 18,000 flight hours without a single serious accident in one passage and 17,000 hours in another; both are published here. The F-104s left on 25 January 1973.

On 25 March 1971 the unit officially took the name Ala 12, and within days second-hand USAF F-4C Phantoms began to arrive, aircraft the Air Force notes had flown in the Vietnam War. They equipped 121 Escuadrón, call sign Póker. Four RF-4C reconnaissance Phantoms followed from October 1976 and more arrived in 1989 and again in late 1995 with updated avionics. The Phantoms logged 90,000 hours before the 14 remaining RF-4Cs were retired in October 2002, when 123 Escuadrón (Titán) was disbanded.

The Hornets came from March 1989: 36 single and two-seat F-18s over three years, with 122 Escuadrón converting first. A temporary 124 Escuadrón (Mambo) trained new crews until that task passed to Ala 15 at Zaragoza in 1995. Ala 12 was the first wing to receive the mid-life update in 2004, and the RecceLite pod took over reconnaissance from 2005, reaching full capability in November 2007. The wing has about 600 people, including 100 civilians, and keeps a quick reaction alert 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

From November 1994 to July 2002 Ala 12, alternating with Ala 15, formed the core of Destacamento Ícaro at Aviano in Italy, the base to which the 401st had moved on paper in 1992. From there Spanish Hornets flew the NATO operations over the former Yugoslavia, including the air campaigns Deliberate Force over Bosnia-Herzegovina (30 August to 20 September 1995) and Allied Force over Kosovo and Serbia (24 March to 10 June 1999), when Spain deployed F/A-18s and KC-130 tankers. The detachment received the Medalla Aérea with collective character, which the Air Force calls one of the most important peacetime awards.

The Libyan war brought a second combat deployment. On 19 March 2011 121 Escuadrón sent four aircraft to Decimomannu in Sardinia as Destacamento Argos, with 122 Escuadrón taking the lead from mid-May, until Ala 15 relieved the wing on 6 July 2011. In 2019 Ala 12 took part in NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission, which ended for it on 3 November.

The wing’s future is less certain than its past. Spain signed for 25 Eurofighters in the Halcón II programme on 20 December 2024, intended to replace the EF-18Ms of Ala 12 and Ala 15, but the specialist site Aeronaves Militares Españolas notes that another replacement, possibly the Turkish KAAN, may yet be sought for the Hornets. No official re-equipment date for Torrejón was found this run.

Torrejón is far more than a fighter base. Wikipedia lists 43 Grupo with its Canadair CL-215 and Bombardier 415 firefighting amphibians, 47 Grupo for electronic warfare and 54 Grupo for flight testing on the field; the official Ala 12 page mentions the Centro Logístico de Armamento y Experimentación (CLAEX) there. These units were not confirmed on an official page this run. From the mid-1990s the base was also Madrid’s second civil airport, relieving Barajas; it closed to civil traffic on 1 February 2013, and the AIP now lists it only as a technical alternate for Barajas under a letter of agreement.

The government and VIP fleet flies from here. According to Aeronaves Militares Españolas, 452 Escuadrón of Ala 45, formerly 45 Grupo, received the first of three ex-Iberia A330-200s on 30 November 2021, designated T.24; they are being converted into A330 MRTT tankers by Airbus at Getafe, and the first converted aircraft, TK.24-02, was delivered on 29 October 2025. On 25 August 2026 the Council of Ministers authorised a framework agreement with Poland for the joint purchase of MRTT aircraft worth 5.4 billion euros, financed through the EU’s SAFE instrument.

Two international bodies also sit on the base. The European Union Satellite Centre began as the Western European Union Satellite Centre (the EU gives 1993, Wikipedia 1 June 1992) and became an EU agency in 2002; it supplies imagery-based intelligence and early warning to the EU, with about 160 staff. NATO’s Combined Air Operations Centre Torrejón, subordinate to Allied Air Command, runs air policing over the airspace south of the Alps.