Iberia Airlines Iberia Plus - Help re Iberia to IBZ from LON

In previous years I have flown annually to IBZ from London via MAD on Iberia- the timings of the direct BA flights have always been too late in the day to be attractive.

However, this year it all seems to have changed. There is now only 1 direct MAD-IBZ Iberia flight per day, and it is too early to connect to from LHR. So I looked at going via BCN instead and discovered a number of Vueling flights that would work. However neither the Iberia website, nor the Iberia phone agent, is able to book LHR-BCN-IBZ-BCN-LHR all on one ticket- the LHR-BCN-LHR and BCN-IBZ-BCN legs all have to be purchased separately. Furthermore, both Vueling and Iberia say (on the phone) that we cannot check our luggage all the way through and have to collect it at BCN for a recheck!

What is going on? Surely it cannot be impossible to fly to Ibiza from London on the Spanish national carrier on a single ticket without having to recheck luggage? Is there something I have missed here? Thanks in advance for any illumination

.....

Keep in mind Vueling is not Iberia, nor is it part of Ibeira.
It is part owned by IB but a wholy separate company. It operates as LCC - the only flight connections it officially supports are its own limited range.

Also I think you are wrong to 'expect' Iberia to necessarily be able make this connection.

If you want to fly oneworld, how about connecting somewhere else? And this year you have all the AirBerlin flights to connect to as well.

It's more of an expectations management issue- if I go on the Iberia website and search for BCN-IBZ flights, all the Vueling flights come up, implying that these are flights that could be booked through Iberia and therefore linked on to an Iberia ticket with another leg. Without having researched the vagaries of Vueling's shareholder structure in advance, it's easy to jump to that conclusion.

Ultimately, it's not that I expect Iberia to make a particular connection, but I guess I did expect the Spanish national carrier to have more than 1 flight per day between MAD and IBZ or BCN and IBZ as has been the case in the past. On further reflection, given the macro situation, it is not actually surprising that this route has been cut- just a further manifestation of Spain's current predicament :(.