Quarentino

Spanish tourism, or the art of putting all one’s eggs in the same basket, has taken another massive knock this week from the slightly odd British decision to oblige all those who come from Spain, returning tourists included, to spend fourteen days in self-quarantine - or maybe just ten days, if The Telegraph is to be believed. 

Another group inconvenienced by the sudden decision are those Spaniards resident in the UK who are either in Spain at the moment, or were planning to visit their family and friends in the coming weeks.

There were only a few hours of warning before Foreign Office advice for Britons to avoid Spain plus the quarantine obligation swung into place on midnight Saturday and despite repeated figures from Facebook warriors and elsewhere showing that more people were being diagnosed with Covid-19 in the UK than they were in Spain.

Adding to the worry, the Anglo-German travel company TUI says that, for the moment, it has cancelled all Britons’ holidays to mainland Spain up to and including Sunday 9 August. Jet2 quickly followed suit, in their case until August 16th.

The Spanish are understandably concerned about losing most or all of the usual 5,000 million euros (2019 figures) that the Brits habitually spend on their Spanish hols. That’s 20% of all foreign visitors.

Norway, Belgium and France are all recommending their subjects to stay away from Spain at this time, adding more woes to the hoteliers.

It’s true that not much of this windfall makes its way to the ordinary, interior bits of Spain, the places without interesting castles, museums, hot springs or wineries to visit. They must make do as they can, but the rest of the country, plus of course its coast and islands, clamour for more tourism each year – the one industry which sells you pleasure, and where the only things you take away in exchange for your cash are a pair of plastic castanets, a touch of sunburn, some stories to tell and a hangover to forget. Come, they say, spend your money (at our slight inconvenience), but then go home again until next time.

Someone who buys a house in a resort or maybe a moribund interior village, along with a car and who plans to live all year round, will clearly be spending a lot more than a visitor. But Spain doesn’t have a ministry or an agency or a budget for them, even though, in these times of pestilence and plague, settlers are even more useful than ever to the Spanish exchequer.

For those Spaniards who work in the tourist sector – waiters, room-cleaners, barmen, tour-bus and taxi-drivers – it means less work, more unemployment. For the owners of many pubs, discos and tee-shirt shops, already beaten down by the past few months, it can mean final closure.

Spain was hoping to persuade the British to allow returning visitors to the Canaries to be let off, with ‘safe corridors’ between the airports – and then, ‘what about us?’ simultaneously asked the Andalucía tourist minister and the Valencian president (here and here), ‘we are pretty safe too!’ they said.

In the end, briefly held talks with Spain on Monday about introducing air bridges with the Balearic and Canary Islands were quickly dismissed by the Foreign Office.