Britons can still fly to Spain despite rise in cases
Confusion over travel rules as Spanish admit they may be in grip of second wave and Europe cracks down
MAJOR European countries moved to tighten travel restrictions yesterday amid growing fears of a second wave of the pandemic in Spain. Jean Castex, France’s prime minister, called on Spain to severely limit border crossings and advised French people against travelling to Catalonia due to “deteriorating sanitary indicators”.
France is also planning to test all its citizens arriving or coming from 16 “red list” countries for Covid-19.
Germany announced it would offer returning holidaymakers free virus tests in airports, as the country recorded its highest number of daily cases for two months. Norway, which has around 10,000 tourists in Spain, will reimpose a 10-day quarantine for people arriving from Spain from today.
Yesterday, however, Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, confirmed that UK holidaymakers can continue to fly to and from Catalonia, Aragon and the Basque country despite Spain recording 2,255 new cases yesterday.
But Mr Shapps maintained the travel ban on Portugal by excluding it from the list of 79 countries and territories exempted from UK quarantine. Portugal had just 313 new cases yesterday, of which only 11 were in the Algarve. Augusto Santos Silva, Portugal’s foreign minister, said the decision was “not consistent with reality and facts”.
António Pina, president of the Algarve’s local councils, referring to Spain, told The Daily Telegraph: “It’s incomprehensible the English permit their citizens to go to places where they can be infected much more [easily].”
It came as María José Sierra, Spain’s deputy health emergency chief, conceded the country could be “in a second wave”. However, Whitehall sources said there were no imminent plans to reimpose quarantine on Spain.
A UK government spokesman said the increase in Spain’s prevalence of Covid-19 was “very slight” and the Spanish authorities were “taking action to manage this”. One factor included the “potential trajectory of the disease in the coming weeks”.
However, he said of Portugal that the risk of importing infections remained “unacceptably high” if quarantine was lifted. Up to 2,300 flights with a potential 410,000 passengers from the UK to Portugal could be cancelled in August if the ban stays, according to Cirium, aviation data analysts.
The controversy was compounded when the Foreign Office confirmed Britons can travel to the Portuguese islands of the Azores and Madeira but they will still have to self-isolate for 14 days on their return. The aviation and tourist industry is pressing for an international system of testing of air passengers not only to open up travel to and from “high risk” countries but also to combat regional virus resurgences.