A pregnant British woman died in an airport in Spain as she was about to board a plane to return home after a holiday on the Costa Brava, it has emerged.

The 21-year-old, thought to be three or four months pregnant, collapsed and died as she waited to board a flight from Girona airport, near Barcelona, to Birmingham on Tuesday afternoon.

The woman was understood to be in a lift on her way from the boarding gate to the plane when she complained of feeling ill. She then vomited and collapsed, and her family was unable to revive her.

There were conflicting reports as to how long it took before paramedics arrived at the scene, between 14 and 26 minutes, after the emergency call was made at 3.24pm local time. She was pronounced dead on arrival.

The secretary general of the local workers union, the GMT, Dolors Bassa, said it was investigating whether the closure last year of an on-site medical emergency centre may have contributed to her death. Emergency care was ended last year because of cutbacks and a drop in passenger numbers leaving the airport, which has around 3 million passengers each year, and there is no on-call doctor or nurse. Bassa said that in such cases, "we know that the first few minutes are vital". A spokesperson for the airport said it had "acted according to the required protocol when there is an emergency" and that the airport "collaborates closely" with the local emergency services.

The victim's body was taken to the Institute of Legal Medicine of Girona, where a postmortem will attempt to establish the cause of death.

The woman was apparently travelling with her sister, brother-in-law and their child and had flown to Spain for the 70th birthday of her grandmother.

The British embassy said: "We are aware of the death of a British national on 1 October in Girona, Spain. We are providing consular assistance to the family at this difficult time."