Wednesday, 15 July 2020

They're Back: The Brits, Unmasked


Andalucía has now joined certain other regions of Spain, including Mallorca, Navarra, Cantabria and Aragón, and has decreed that one must wear a face-mask when outside. It’s a bit of politics – now the health responsibilities have been passed (at their insistence) to the regional governments – mixed with a lot of common-sense.
However, we are now in the high tourist season, such as it is this year, and many potential visitors may be thinking that it won’t be like other years. Indeed it won’t, with rationing and booking bits of beach and half the pools closed and no disco dancing (or apparently singing!). Others won’t take kindly to being fined for not wearing their face-mask, which – needless to say – is only allowed to be removed when one is sat in front of a beer or a chicken sandwich. 
It being the season, we have been inundated with stories of Brits leaping off roofs of hotels, or jumping onto the roofs of cars, or coughing on their fellow diners, or falling about drunk in one or another way: the subject for yet another indignant story on the Spanish news.
The Telegraph claims that ‘Spaniards are most opposed to the arrival of UK holidaymakers, with nearly two thirds (61 per cent), keen on Britons to stay away this year, 15 percentage points more than any other European nationality…’.
Do other nationalities feel as bad about their own fellow-citizens as we British resident in Spain seem to feel about ours?
Spain needs the tourism, both for the income and the jobs, but no doubt it could do with a bit better behaviour from its guests.

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