UK quarantine change catches travelers unaware

MADRID－British tourists flying home on Sunday after a holiday in Spain angrily reacted to an abrupt decision by their government to make everyone arriving from the Mediterranean country spend 14 days in quarantine.

Britain's decision late on Saturday to take Spain off a safe-travel list over a rise in coronavirus cases took effect from midnight, leaving travelers with no time to dodge it, and with major concerns about their returns, tourists at Madrid's Barajas airport said.

The British foreign ministry also advised against all but essential travel to mainland Spain, a move likely to prompt tour operators to cancel package holidays and trigger claims against insurers.

"It's really bad because it's just come all of a sudden, it's not given very much time to prepare so everyone is now panicking," said Emily Harrison, from Essex, who was taking a flight to London and faced the prospect of having to self-isolate for two weeks.

"It ruins plans for everybody," Harrison said. "We had a wedding to go to and we had plans to visit friends and family who we haven't seen in a very long time, and now we are going to have to cancel all those plans, so it's really quiet upsetting."

Europe's biggest travel company, TUI, said it was canceling all departures to Spain on Sunday from the United Kingdom, and was urgently reviewing future flights.

"We're incredibly disappointed that we didn't get more notice of this announcement, or that this decision wasn't made yesterday, as many Brits travel on holiday at the weekend," said TUI's UK managing director Andrew Flintham.

Spain's Canary and Balearic Islands are not covered by the advice to avoid travel to the mainland, but holidaymakers returning to Britain from the islands will still be subject to quarantine on return.

Spain was one of the countries in Europe worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 290,000 cases and more than 28,000 deaths, according to Reuters. It imposed very strict lockdown measures to contain the spread, gradually easing them earlier in the summer.

Spain had been on a list of countries that the British government had said were safe for travelers to visit. But it has had surge in cases in the past few weeks, prompting most regions to impose rules for masks to be worn everywhere and, in several areas including Barcelona, calls for people to stay at home.

While Spain was hard hit, Britain itself has been hit harder, with an official death toll of more than 45,600. Some British tourists pointed out that Spain's mask-wearing rules were much stricter than Britain's.

A collapse of tourism from Britain would have far more of an impact on Spain's economy.

Britons made up more than 20 percent of foreign visitors to Spain last year, the largest group by nationality, a key source of income for a country that depends on tourism for about 12 percent of its economy.

Agencies Via Xinhua