Originally Posted by ErickG

Just flew out of Madrid earlier today.
First: If you are travelling internationally out of Madrid-Barajas airport arrive at least 3 hours before your flight. The lines at security check points can be quite long. Fortunately, we were travelling in Business, so we were able to use the fast-track lines (much shorter). But, the problem is at passport control, where the lines can be really, really long, and there are no fast-track lines. It took us today almost 1 hour to get through passport control. Crazy!
Also, when we checked-in with American, we were told that the VIP lounge they usually use (Iberia's Velazquez lounge) was closed for renovations, so they were sending all their First class and Business travelers to another Iberia VIP lounge, the Dali. The Dali lounge is nice enough, but it's located a long distance from the gates (after security check points but before passport control).
The curious thing is that after using the Dali lounge and spending almost an hour going though passport control, we walked by the much closer-to-gates Velazquez lounge and noticed that it was open and operational! Passengers were coming in and out of it. What the heck. Anyone with any idea why AA is directing their passengers to the much less convenient Dali lounge?