07/26/2020 - 14:22
- Clarín.com
- World
The Government of Madrid affirmed that Spain is a "safe" country against the coronavirus pandemic after the double blow to tourism that led to the imposition of a quarantine by the British Government and the cancellation for two weeks of many packages by the operator. TUI tourism due to regrowths of COVID-19 registered on Spanish soil.
"Spain is a safe country. Like other European countries, Spain has outbreaks. This is not unusual. The most important thing is that Spain is making a great effort to control these outbreaks," said Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya.
In statements to the press, González Laya stressed that the health authorities make "an enormous effort" in identifying cases and their contacts, and recalled that half of the infections detected are from asymptomatic people.
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Watch the specialThe Spanish minister stressed that she is in permanent contact with London so that the British authorities "can exclude the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands from their quarantine measures," two key destinations for international tourism.
The British decision, announced by surprise on Saturday night, adds to the recommendations of other countries not to travel to the whole of Spain or to some of its regions , as Norway, Belgium or France did in the last week, with a predictable strong impact on tourism.
In addition, the Anglo-German operator TUI, the largest in Europe, announced the suspension of its packages destined for Spain for two weeks from tomorrow, Monday, until August 9, except those directed to the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, where the incidence disease is low.
In this sense, the president of the Council of Mallorca (the largest of the Balearic Islands), Catalina Cladera, said that the British Government "has to understand that not all of Spain is the same."
Likewise, associations of tourism companies of the Canary Islands trusted that London will exempt its archipelago due to the "good situation" of the islands in terms of the incidence of the pandemic.
Spanish airports had a total of 369 flights (departures and arrivals) with the United Kingdom scheduled for this Sunday , and the British government measure caused confusion among passengers arriving at check-in desks this morning.
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One of them was José González, who has an ice distribution business in London, and who described Efe as what happened as "bitch", because he came to Madrid on Friday to spend the weekend and would not have done it if he had known they could force him to confine himself on the way back.
Sofía, a young Spanish woman who had planned a week-long vacation in London with her boyfriend - who has her family there - had to change her plans due to the new restrictions.
And several British tourists returning to their country were resigned to the new situation , which took them by surprise just at the end of their holidays.
It is an "inconvenience" but "it is the right thing to do" and "it is not something that can be chosen", summed up a British citizen.
The British Government and TUI announcements fell as a blow to the important and beaten tourism sector , the most important in the Spanish economy, and which had already lost much of the summer season due to the pandemic.
In Barcelona, one of the most touristic cities in the country, the outbreaks of recent weeks caused a wave of cancellations and that some hotels that had opened re-closed.
"Everything has been paralyzed again", acknowledges Efe the general director of the Barcelona Hotels Guild, Manel Casals, who predicts that high-volume tourist activity "will not return" until 2021.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex, whose country is the largest issuer of tourists to Catalonia, last Friday "strongly" recommended that its citizens not travel to that region , of which Barcelona is the capital.
"Visiting Catalonia is safe" if the security measures envisaged to prevent coronavirus infections are respected, said the vice president of the Catalan autonomous government, Pere Aragonès in response.
Catalonia, the Spanish region most affected by the outbreaks of recent weeks, reported this Sunday 886 new infections in the last 24 hours, compared to 1,493 yesterday.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Confederation of Travel Agencies (CEAV) considered the quarantine of the British Government "very serious" .
In another very tourist region, Andalusia, from the vice president of the regional government and head of Tourism, Juan Marín, considered the quarantine of the United Kingdom as "very bad news", since British tourism "is one of our main", especially in the famous area of the Costa del Sol.
And it is that tourism accounts for 12.3% of Spain's gross domestic product (GDP) and before the outbreak of the pandemic it employed 2.45 million people, 12.7% of all jobs in the country.
Spain is the second country in the world in foreign tourist arrivals, with 83.7 million foreign visitors in 2019, who spent a total of 92.278 million euros.
Source. EFE and AFP