Spain will likely be off limits to British travellers until the end of summer.
If you’re planning a summer holiday to Spain, we have some bad news for you. At a meeting with the World Tourism Organisation in Madrid, the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, announced that the country will only start welcoming international travellers again once 70% of its citizens have been vaccinated. And based on the current rate of vaccinations, it is highly unlikely that that will be before the end of summer.
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Sanchez said “Our internal plan is to promote a strategy that includes vaccination of the Spanish population at the highest possible rate. And we are going to advance with the vaccination at the highest rate until reaching 70 per cent of the population with immunity by the end of summer. This will allow Spain to be progressively better prepared to receive international tourists.”
Like many European countries, the coronavirus infection rates are continuing to rise in Spain and there have now been over 55,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandmeic. As it stands, all non-essential travel to and from Spain is suspended until February 2, largely due to the new Covid mutations circulating in the UK. The only exception to the rule is Spanish residents returning from the UK if they can provide a negative Covid-19 test upon arrival. The Spanish tourism industry has greatly suffered over the last year with a whopping loss of €106 billion, and by the looks of things it’ll be a while until it fully recovers.
Our summer plans may be ruined but if you’re willing to travel a little further afield, the Seychelles will welcome travellers who have had the Covid-19 vaccine, with no quarantine required.