(published 29th July)
The UK government’s handling, specifically in relation to the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands, has been shabbily conducted.
My particular focus is on the Canaries, with Lanzarote in mind.
Health
The infection rate in the Canary Islands is 2.3 per 100,000 people (source, click here) in the last 7 days. Whereas the UK is at a figure of 14 per 100,000 (that is a figure in the last 14 days, click here).
In Lanzarote alone there has been no island transmission for months now, with any cases being imported. All cases have been dealt with rigorously, the few that have imported the virus on flights have all been isolated and not managed to pass on to any passengers. This is very encouraging and proves the measures in place work.
You will struggle to find a place (that is as easily accessed from the UK) as safe as the Canary Islands. Many will question the farcicality of travelling from a country demonstrably safer than their own home area and being asked to quarantine.
How did the government reach its decision?
There was an internal debate in Whitehall (according to a Times Radio journalist) about whether to exempt the Canaries and Balearics from the 14-day quarantine on return to the UK or to double-down and make the non-essential travel warning position even more blanket. Sadly, having a more hardline stance won.
Meanwhile, in the Daily Telegraph a source was quoted as saying “There was some discussion about imposing quarantine depending on which region of Spain people had been to, and Michael Gove said that from a selfish point of view he should have argued for it to be mainland Spain only, as he was supposed to be going to Ibiza at the end of the week, but he and everyone else agreed it should be the whole country, partly because you can’t stop people travelling between regions while they are there.”
It's extraordinary the Foreign Office has used travel between regions to extend their non-essential travel warning to the Islands. How many British tourists in Lanzarote also go to Barcelona in the same trip?
In the UK it is much easier to travel to and from Leicester, where local measures were implemented to combat a spike.
Clearly, this decision wasn’t on health grounds for the Spanish Islands.
The government should publish its reasoning in detail (we only know the above through a newspaper briefing) so that travel companies and people can make their plans based on better information in the future.
Geography
The Islands are nearly 1,000 kilometres from the mainland, at the nearest points both ways. Check out a map!
Flights from the mainland to the Canaries are subject to the same checks as international flights in terms of the Covid-19 effort.
France
Travel from France is not subject to quarantine on return to the UK, as well as the non-essential travel warning. France borders much of the areas of concern in Spain and those borders are open. You can be almost at that border and then return to the UK and not be asked to quarantine.
Gibraltar
Gibraltar, of course, has high connectivity with the Spanish mainland given it shares a flowing border. Like France, Gibraltar is not part of the travel warnings or quarantine rule and this makes the UK government’s position on the Canaries all the more baffling.
Germany
The German government has adopted a regional approach, in making warnings surrounding Spain’s affected areas but not throwing the Islands under the same blanket.
Jobs
Tourism is almost all Lanzarote has. Practically everybody there depends upon it. It’s a punishing blow, just as businesses were re-opening, to now wipe out the already diminished demand.
Of course it’s not just jobs on the island. In the UK, jobs at travel companies, including the likes of Jet2 and Tui, were being brought back off the government furlough scheme and operating healthy summer schedules.
Look at the destinations served in normal times of any airport in the UK and you’ll see a large proportion of the flights made up of flights to the Canary and Balearic Islands.