Coronavirus: Federal Foreign Office warns against traveling to Madrid

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Puerta del Sol square in Madrid during the lockdown in Spain (photo taken on April 19)

Due to the corona pandemic, the Federal Foreign Office warns against unnecessary tourist trips to Spain's capital Madrid and the Spanish Basque Country. The Ministry justified this on Tuesday evening in Berlin with "again high numbers of infections". A warning against traveling to three other Spanish regions, including Catalonia with the tourist metropolis of Barcelona and the beaches of the Costa Brava, has been in force since the end of July. The popular holiday island of Mallorca and the Canary Islands are still not affected.

A travel warning is not a ban, but is intended to have a significant deterrent effect. It also has a positive side for travelers: it enables bookings to be canceled free of charge. After the outbreak of the corona pandemic, the Federal Foreign Office issued a worldwide travel warning for tourist trips for the first time on March 17. It was initially lifted again in mid-June for more than 30 European countries.

However, it has now been fully or partially reactivated for five EU partners. This usually happens when the number of new coronavirus infections exceeds the mark of 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days. In addition to the areas in Spain, Luxembourg, the Belgian province of Antwerp and regions in Bulgaria and Romania are also affected.

Regarding the reclassification of Madrid and the Spanish Basque Country, it is now said on the website of the Foreign Office that Spain is severely affected by Covid-19. There are currently "new regional sources of infection in Aragón, Catalonia, Navarra, the Basque Country and the capital region of Madrid". In the south of the country and on the islands, the infection numbers are still at a low or medium level.

Worry in Mallorca

In Mallorca, however, there are fears that the island could also be declared a corona risk area if the number of infections there continues to rise, writes the German-language "Mallorca Zeitung". For the islands, which are extremely dependent on tourism, that would be another major blow. Previously, the quarantine requirement in Great Britain for returnees from Spain, which was ordered at the end of July, had caused a slump in bookings.

Anyone returning to Germany from a risk area must have been tested for Corona since Saturday. There is currently a travel warning for more than 160 countries, but only about 130 of them are classified as risk areas.

According to a survey by the real estate portal Fotocasa, the Corona crisis is currently also having an impact on rents in Madrid and other large Spanish cities: Between June and July, rents in Madrid were an average of 1.7 percent and in Barcelona even 2.5 Percent after.

wbr / dpa