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Spain will allow Brits to travel without quarantining for 14 days from tomorrow in huge boost to holidaymakers
SPAIN will allow Brits to travel to the country without the need to quarantine there, the nation's foreign minister has said.
Anyone returning to the UK would still need to quarantine for 14 days under the Government plans for nearly all new arrivals in an effort to prevent new coronavirus cases arriving from abroad.
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Currently the Foreign Office warns against all but non-essential travel abroad.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under considerable pressure from within his own party to form so-called air bridges with nations that have Covid-19 under control to exempt them from the quarantine, which the travel industry wants scrapped.
Spain will allow the entry of visitors from the European Union from Sunday when it ends its state of emergency, and Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said this would apply to British citizens too.
"We will allow British visitors to enter Spain just like the rest of the European Union as from June 21 freely and without the need for a quarantine," she told BBC News.
"We're discussing with the UK authorities to see if they would do the same on their side, we nevertheless are doing this out of respect for the 400,000 British citizens that have a second residence in Spain and are dying to benefit from their homes in our country.
"We do hope they (the UK Government) will be sensitive to the 250,000 Spaniards that are also living in the UK and would like to enter the UK without a quarantine."
However she added all visitors will be subject to a “triple check” to look for coronavirus symptoms on arrival at the country’s airports, and will have to register “so we know we have a contact point to trace them.”
She said: “We want to make sure that we welcome visitors, but we want to do this in safety and security for them, as well as for the Spaniards."
Spain closed its borders on March 14 in a bid to slow the spread of the virus.
Wary of re-importing the disease to the nation also ravaged by Covid-19, Ms Gonzalez Laya said visitors would face a "triple check" on their origin, temperature and contact point to stem the spread.
Portugal's ambassador to the UK has also said the nation wants to welcome British tourists again now the coronavirus alert level has been reduced.
Manuel Lobo Antunes told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There was very good news for you, for us, for Europe that the alert system has come from four to three and that means a significant improvement in the control of the pandemic here in the UK.
"We think that the situation is under control and we would be happy to receive, as before, as many British as possible."
In a further boost for British holidaymakers, Ryanair said it's restarting flights to Spain from Sunday.
The low-cost airline was due to resume flights on July 1 but has confirmed some routes will now restart tomorrow.
A flight to Alicante in Spain is scheduled to leave East Midlands Airport on Sunday at 3.45pm.
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A Ryanair spokesperson said: "Although we are officially back with 1,000 daily flights from 1 July (across the network), some routes are starting from 21 June."
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But the Foreign Office is still advising British nationals against all but essential international travel.
And all passengers bar a handful of exemptions must still go into self-isolation for 14 days after arriving in the UK.
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