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ARCHIVED - Spain re-negotiates tourist corridors with the United Kingdom
Foreign Affairs Minister González Laya sees the opening of "a window of opportunity" for Spanish tourism
There’s no doubt that the loss of international tourists due to the multiple restrictions on travel to Spain and mandatory quarantines imposed by nations across Europe on those visiting Spain has been a hard blow for the tourism sector, which has predicted that by the end of the year its losses will amount to nearly 100 billion euros.
So any straws are worth clutching at and the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, announced on Tuesday that Spain will negotiate "tourist corridors" with the United Kingdom after an announcement from the UK Government relating to a rethink of its strategy for travel recommendations within the framework of the coronavirus to analyze the epidemiological situation of islands separately.
The Spanish Government hopes that safe "tourist corridors" to the Spanish offshore islands can be confirmed, "the agreement that has been reached with the United Kingdom is that the corridors can be launched with an archipelago approach, now it will be necessary to negotiate in which place, and based on what information Spain should provide," González Laya explained in an interview with RNE radio.
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The minister has made it clear that this agreement has yet to be finalized but has defended that "the important thing is that a window of opportunity that did not exist before is opening."
The new British approach, announced on Monday, has not meant any change for the Balearic Islands or the Canary Islands at the moment, and those who enter the United Kingdom from the Spanish archipelagos continue to have a two-week quarantine.
British Transport Minister, Grant Shapps, stressed that the rate of infections in the Balearic and Canary Islands is still too high, and indeed, the contagions rate is higher now than when London first imposed a quarantine for travellers from all over Spain, which included the archipelagos. In fact, the first consequence of the new British policy has been to impose a quarantine on travellers from seven Greek islands – excluding the remainder of Greece.
However, González Laya maintains that , "it is important news" especially for the Canary archipelago, which has "a specificity of winter tourism that is almost more important than that of summer," and is a popular winter sun destination.
The Minister explained in the interview that the Government is "fighting on two fronts", in both Brussels and in the United Kingdom so that, as the Covid pandemic progresses and it becomes clear that it will be necessary for us all just to live with it, the methods used to make decisions are harmonised within the EU, based on " territorialized "data.
Spain is amongst the EU partners calling for harmonization and uniformity in European measures, and asking the EU to set standard levels against which travel restrictions or recommendations can be made, based not only on the numbers of infections, but also on asymptomatic, hospitalized cases, ICU admissions and the number of tests performed.
Spain is currently reporting considerably higher case rates per capita than many of its more important target markets, but is also carrying out considerably more tests than many of these same countries and does not want to be penalised for its attempts to locate and quarantine asymptomatic cases rather than pretending they don´t exist in order to publish artificially low case rates.
Asked about the outbreak of the pandemic in Spain and whether it could be due to the fact that the borders were opened too soon, she pointed out that all countries are experiencing new outbreaks although "perhaps in Spain they began earlier than in other countries". She also said that "it is not surprising", because infections have grown as freedom of movement has increased.
"It is a reflection of the situation with which we are going to have to live," she said: the opening of spaces and return to activity must be made compatible with "control and responsibility so that Covid does not run amok."