ARCHIVED - Spain to remain on amber and Portugal to move to amber; UK travel recommendations

According to the BBC, Portugal is being moved down from green to amber

The BBC has indicated that Spain will stay on the amber list.

As is often the case, the BBC has obtained information in advance about an announcement to be made by the UK government later today indicating that Spain will remain on the amber list for a further three weeks.

As expected, the British government will continue to view Spain as a whole, rather than permitting low incidence areas such as the Canary Islands to move to a green status.

There is considerable variation in the accumulated incidence rate across Spain; the Balearic Islands is reporting only 38 cases per 100,000; the Canary Islands 72 cases per 100,000, the Valencia region (including Alicante province) 35 cases per 100,000; Galicia 66 and Murcia 69. At the other end of the scale are the Basque Country with 198, La Rioja with 186 and Andalucía with 177, the average for the whole country now being 118.

There had been hopes that the British government would permit the offshore islands to move to green, even though it was widely anticipated that the rate in Spain was too high for the whole country to be moved down to green and that Spain would remain on amber for the next three weeks.

Although the UK government is not banning travel abroad it continues to reiterate the message that it would prefer travellers not to leave the UK this summer and continues to insist on a 10 day quarantine on return for those who do choose to visit amber countries.

The tourism sector in Spain had been hoping for an uplift in the number of British tourists visiting the country during June as it struggles to resume trading; during April 630,647 visitors are reported to have arrived in Spain from abroad: an infinite increase on the figure of zero for last April, during the initial coronavirus lockdown, but almost insignificant in comparison with the same month in 2019, when over 7.1 million sunseekers flocked to Spain.

The number of tourists from the UK, traditionally the most important market, was just 23,919 in April as flights were still largely inoperative, whereas two years ago the figure was reported as being almost 1.5 million!

During the first four months of 2021 it is estimated that spending by British visitors amounted to just 89 million euros as opposed to almost 4 billion in 2019, equating to a 97.7 per cent loss in economic activity derived from UK tourists.

A loss which is being keenly felt in not only the businesses directly engaged in the tourist sector but also all those providing services to the sector and associated businesses; we’re all hurting.

However, the BBC has indicated that Portugal is being removed from the green list and moved down to the amber list, a huge disappopintment for the many thousands who had booked holidays in the expectation that the country would remain on green and that quarantine on return would not be necessary.

Should the announcement later today confirm the claim made by the BBC, anyone due to come back from Portugal after June 8 will have to quarantine and there is expected to be a repeat of the scenes witnessed last summer when holidaymakers were forced to cut short their holiday in order to return before the deadline in order to avoid having to quarantine afterwards.

It’s a bitter blow for all those who have booked holidays and even worse news for the travel sector which had been hoping to ease into the summer without a repetition of the scenes of angry holidaymakers which characterised the disruptive nature of last summer.