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article_detail
Date Published: 20/06/2020
ARCHIVED - Spain removes quarantine requirement for British travellers
Tourists arriving in Spain will not be obliged to quarantine, although at the moment the UK Government will still impose a 14 day quarantine on return to the UK
On Saturday the first tourism flights since the imposition of a state of emergency in Spain arrived in mainland airports as the country leaves the de-escalation process and embarks on the “new normal”.
On Sunday more than 100 flights will land in Spain, bringing tourists from within the UE and Schengen area nations to the mainland and across Spain free movement resumes, as residents are once again permitted to move between the 17 regions of mainland Spain.
And finally, after weeks of uncertainty, it has been confirmed that British tourists will be amongst them, allowed to enter Spain without undergoing a 14 day quarantine period, the same conditions applied to citizens of EU member states and Schengen countries.
All those arriving by air will be required to undergo a temperature test, provide contact details to enable health services in the respective regional communities to contact them should the need arise and will finally undergo a visual examination to ensure that there are no visible signs of Covid positives entering the country, but no further tests will be undertaken.
In response to concerns from regional governments about the possibility that foreign visitors may bring the Covid-19 virus with them and infect the local population, safe locations in which foreign travellers testing positive for Covid can be lodged have been prepared, minimising the risk to local people, enabling local health services to “isolate and treat” Covid cases.
This system has been used successfully to isolate outbreaks during the lockdown and de-escalation periods, a typical example being that of a group of agricultural workers who were found to be positive here in the Murcia Region; all of their known contacts were immediately identified and all were quarantined in a sports training centre to minimise the risk to the local population.
Decision not made until Saturday evening
After a week of intense speculation, conflicting messages and mounting concern as the date on which the first flights were scheduled to land approached, the Spanish Government finally made the announcement on Saturday evening that British residents would be permitted to travel to Spain without the need for a 14 day quarantine, although at the moment the UK has still not relaxed its own requirements for those returning to the UK to self-isolate for 14 days.
The UK is not due to review its own policy of imposing a 14 day quarantine until the 29th June, on which date it is also expected to announce a series of agreements relating to the creation of “travel corridors” between the UK and several other countries.
Officials are said to be in talks with their counterparts in Portugal, France, Italy, Greece and Spain.
So at the moment anyone returning to the UK must self-isolate for 14 days.
Spain's foreign affairs minister Arancha González Laya said in an interview with the BBC that Spain had taken the decision to allow UK citizens to enter the country on equal terms with their EU counterparts "out of respect" for the substantial number of British property owners who own holiday properties in Spain.
The UK Government has not currently agreed to a reciprocal arrangement for Spanish nationals. The Minister said that: "We do hope that [the British authorities] will be sensitive to the 250,000 Spaniards that are also living in the UK and would very much like to enter the UK without quarantine."
Those intending to travel to Spain within the next few days are strongly advised to check their travel insurance, as the Foreign Office has maintained the conditions of the “Exceptional Travel Advisory Notice” which advises British nationals against all but essential international travel.
Travellers may find that their travel insurance policy is invalidated whilst this notice is in place and they may not be covered by their insurance in the eventuality that they become ill during their time in Spain.
Concerns about recent outbreaks and case numbers
As foreign nationals begin to enter Spain there is considerable concern that the short term gains of re-opening for tourism will lead to long-term pain for the Spanish economy should the visitors leave Covid cases as well as euros when they visit, the subsequent costs of prolonging the crisis increased by a resurgence in cases.
Germany records the largest outbreak of coronavirus in Europe
German authorities are concerned about the outbreak detected at the Toennies abattoir in Gütersloh in which more than a thousand workers are affected and which has become the largest coronavirus outbreak in Europe.As a result, the Spanish authorities are understandably concerned as the initial “trial phase” of more than 10,000 tourists from Germany in the Balearic Islands is already underway.
UK relaxes its restrictions whilst recording 1,200 cases a day
The UK has been the largest source of concern for the Spanish authorities as although the UK is the biggest market for Spanish tourism, with 18 million Brits choosing Spain as their holiday destination every year, the UK has also been the most castigated country in Europe by the Pandemic. There have been more than 303,000 total cases and 42,500 deaths, and the number of cases continues to rise at an average of 1200 cases a day.The British authorities are in the process of relaxing lockdown restrictions in spite of the continued high number of cases.
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