Only 5 EU Countries Allow Unrestricted Travel to Spain Costing Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca Millions in Losses

Unrestricted travel: Only 5 countries allow unrestricted travel to Spain image: Twitter

ONLY five EU countries now allow unrestricted travel to Spain, an issue which has cost the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca millions in losses. Most of the Schengen countries have issued restrictions when travelling from and to certain areas of Spain, others have directly applied quarantines, such as the UK, or even requested negative PCR tests, such as Greece, the latest country to add Spain to the blacklist.
At this point in the summer, the health crisis in Spain has gambled away several billion euros as well as several million tourists. Last summer, Spain welcomed 28.9 million international tourists in total, who arrived as follows: 9.9 million tourists in July, 10.1 million in August and 8.9 million in September. These figures were provided thanks to a survey of tourist movements conducted at the border which was been published by the National Institute of Statistics.
During these three months of 2019, foreign tourists who visited Spain spent a combined total of €33,451 million. On average, each tourist spent €1,154 during their stay in Spain. Now business on Spain’s Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca are struggling to make ends meet, many have even chosen to lock up and leave, due to their accumulated debts. Summer was the beacon of light at the end of the quarantine tunnel. However, the virus has shown minimal signs of slowing down and experts fear another Covid wave is approaching.
Most of the tourists who visited in previous years (and who left the most money in Spain) are English, German, French, Italian, Belgian, Nordic and American. All of these tourism markets have now set certain restrictions when travelling to Spain. Many have enforced a mandatory quarantine upon arrival whilst others demand a negative PCR test upon entry to their country. Therefore, many have chosen to avoid these restrictions and taken their spending money elsewhere.
However, not all countries have applied vetoes to Spain. There are five Schengen countries (Poland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Romania and Sweden) that have not imposed any restrictions. The problem is that tourists from these countries hardly visit Spain – or if they do, they do so in small numbers. Only Portuguese tourists travel abundantly to Spain with approximately 900,000 tourists visiting between July and September of 2019.

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Written by

Laura Taylor

Laura Taylor is a graduate from the University of Leeds. At university, she obtained a Bachelors in Communication and Media, as well as a Masters in International Relations.
She is half British and half Spanish and resides in Malaga. Her focus when writing news typically encompasses national Spanish news and local news from the Costa del Sol.

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