Spanish tourists flock to Costa Blanca for an Easter break in the sun, despite Covid-19 lockdown and almost 14,000 deaths

DESPITE a national  lockdown, almost 14,000 Covid-19 related deaths and police and army patrols, hordes of Spaniards have been making their way to their second homes in the Alicante Province to spend Easter on the beach.

According to Local Police, Spanish tourists have been driving to their villas and apartments in Javea and Denia for a short break in the sun.

Cars have been spotted at urbanisations normally deserted, with police confident a handful of second home owners (many of them from Madrid) have broken the obligatory confinement dictated by the State of Alarm imposed in mid-March.

Local and National officers in Denia fined a married couple with a son who admitted that they had travelled to their second home in the province, but to return to their home town to collect “medicine they urgently needed.”

Another couple from Madrid were caught with their three children and housekeeper in Ambolo cove in Javea at the weekend, closed for years due to landslide risks. Before being fined, they told officers “they had to get the children out of the house for some fresh air.”

Since the beginning of lockdown, police in Javea have issued 165 fines and arrested two people.

But they claim the last few days “work has been piling up,” with 50 fines issued at the weekend, and a further 20 yesterday.

Twenty per cent of the weekend’s fines went to Spanish tourists  travelling to their second homes. And of those issued yesterday, the majority went to people who wanted to “escape to the beach for Holy Week.”

One of them reportedly exclaimed he had managed to “avoid the checkpoints by leaving Madrid at dawn” adding “the journey had gone smoothly as he didn’t even come across another car.”