TRAVEL: Spain WILL NOT quarantine UK tourists

TOURISTS from the UK will not have to quarantine when they arrive in Spain, it has been announced.

The country’s foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez said visiting Brits would not have to self-isolate.

From tomorrow Spain is set to open its borders to the UK, the EU and the Schengen area.

The exception is Portugal, which, at the request of its own Government, will not open its land border with Spain until July 1.

Gonzalez said the decision not to quarantine Brits was ‘out of respect’ for the hundreds of thousands of second home-owners in Spain.

Meanwhile anyone entering the UK will have to self-isolate for 14 days, including Brit holidaymakers returning from Spain.

This is to be reviewed on June 29.

It comes as the Government announced a triple health check for those entering Spain.

The three hoops Brits will need to jump through on arrival at Spanish airports are proof of where they are staying, a temperature check and a ‘visual illness assessment’.

Gonzalez 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.

“We do hope that [the British authorities] will be sensitive to the 250,000 Spaniards that are also living in the UK and would very much like to enter the UK without quarantine.

“We also respect that countries look at entry or exit restrictions on the basis of their own data.”

The announcement that Brits will not have to quarantine comes after some confusion when Gonzalez gave another interview to the BBC.

The minister appeared to suggest that Brits may still need to quarantine for a fortnight.

In Andalucia, Costa del Sol tourism chiefs had already been vehemently opposed to the quarantine of Brits.

In the Balearic Islands foreign tourism has been underway since Monday with the arrival of the first of some 10,000 Germans as part of a ‘pilot tourism test’.

One of the first Germans to arrive, Christian Meyer from Dusseldorf spoke to the Olive Press.

He said: “I’m really happy to be here in Mallorca. I’ve been coming to the island every year once or twice a year.”