SPAIN’s 2021 summer season could be in doubt as the British government is discussing whether Spain could be added to its Red List of countries.

The news was revealed by The Telegraph on Wednesday and confirmed by local media yesterday that the the UK’s Department of Transport is studying whether to add Spain to the list of countries under a travel ban.

At the time of print, 33 countries are currently on the UK’s red list, meaning that anyone wanting to travel to and from the listed destinations are forced to quarantine in government allocated hotels for 11 days.

The cost of the hotel is the responsibility of the traveler and can cost upwards of €2000, leaving non essential travel almost impossible.

The ruling will exclude citizens of each country returning home, however official documentation and a negative PCR test will still be required.

New variants, discovered by research from the World Health Organisation, from countries outside the travel ban list has concerned the UK government and caused a review of the current high risk list.

Of main concern are the new Brazilian and South African variants that have been discovered in countries such as Austria, France, Greece and the US.

‘Our priority has always been protecting the health of the UK public, and we must now focus on ensuring the success of our vaccination programme,” said a spokesman for the Department of Transport.

‘We will therefore continue taking action to lower the chances of new variants entering the UK.”

“Our decision will be based on evidence from the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC), and Spain and the US our on our high priority list.” said the spokesman to the Telegraph.

The news comes as Spain has seen contradicting fortunes to the UK in COVID-19 cases, with the country seeing a steady decline over previous months, leading to tourist ministers being hopeful of a return to normality for summer 2021.

Fernando Valdes went on record last week to reassure British tourists that they will not need to quarantine upon entering Spain, and is keen on the introduction of ‘vaccination passports’ to allow freedom of travel.

This optimism will surely now be extinguished with the news coming from the UK, a country that is seeing cases continue to rise despite an apparent successful vaccination rollout program.

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