Spain will carry out controls on British citizens who come on vacation to our country, although, today, the Balearic Islands is the only national territory to which London does not impose its restrictions when coming. From now on, the British will have to present a negative PCR , in addition to being able to undergo a test at the airport. Security measures requested by the Socialist Government of the Balearic Islands that the Community of Madrid has been demanding from the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, since last autumn to stop the entry of the British strain through the Barajas airport.
Just a year ago, the Government of the Community of Madrid asked the Executive of Sánchez for a plan to shield Barajas from the ” drain ” that the airport had become, according to President Isabel Díaz Ayuso . Moncloa and the Ministry of Development, responsible for airport control, described that request as alarmist and unjustified.
Months later, at the height of Christmas and after several more official requests, a fact that would mark the subsequent evolution of the pandemic in Spain was confirmed: one of the entry doors of the British strain in Spain, the direct cause of the third wave of infections that the country suffered in the first months of 2021, had been the Barajas airport itself. “It has become known again that PCRs are hardly carried out , they are done randomly, and that contagious cases such as the British are entering as a sneak,” Ayuso insisted in December after sending another new letter to Moncloa asking to convert the airport into a “place insurance”.
The response of the Socialist Executive, however, has been very different to the same request that the Balearic Socialist Government has made, in the hands of Francina Armengol . It was last week when the Balearic Islands requested stricter entry controls for British citizens and the obligation of a negative PCR or full-schedule vaccination, after the Government of Boris Johnson lifted the veto on trips to the Pitiusas.
“Worrying” data
According to Sánchez, the measure – which will begin to be applied in 72 hours – is justified in the epidemiological figures currently registered in the United Kingdom. According to the president, the data is worrying as infections are “well above 150 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 14 days.”
On the other hand, the accumulated incidence in the United Kingdom that December 29, when Ayuso demanded to tighten controls on the British, was 690 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 14 days. More than four times higher.
Sánchez explained that in recent days his Government has been working on the application of this control measure in the Balearic Islands, designed by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Health and Interior.
The socialist leader has also admitted that he is ” concerned ” by the outbreak that has occurred in the Balearic Islands, where more than 700 young people who had come to the islands on end-of-year trips from other parts of Spain have already been infected. But he has clarified that it is necessary to see the profile of the infected, specifying that they are young people, asymptomatic, not vaccinated and that they do not need hospitalization.
