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Brexit: Spain opens help desk for its citizens living in the UK

Spain opened a help desk at its embassy in London on Wednesday to answer questions from Spaniards living in Britain about the effects of Brexit on their lives.

Published: 29 March 2017 21:51 CEST

Brexit: Spain opens help desk for its citizens living in the UK

A newspaper stand shows a copy of today's Evening Standard, with the front page story relating to British Prime Minister Theresa May's triggering of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. Photo: AFP

The desk will provide information on issues such as changes to university fees, residence permit rules, access to healthcare and taxation once Britain leaves the European Union, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The office opened as the British government set in motion the process to quit the EU over the next two years, following a referendum in June 2016 in which a slim majority of Britons voted to leave the bloc.

The Spanish government has said its priority is to quickly achieve a deal that protects the rights of Spaniards who live in Britain as well as those of Britons who live in Spain.

“We want to maintain in the most broad and generous way possible the rights that they actually enjoy,” Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis told a parliamentary commission on Wednesday when asked about Brexit.

There are some 130,000 Spaniards registered as living in Britain. Thousands more are thought to live legally in the country without having registered as permanent residents.

Spain is the number one destination for British nationals living outside Britain. The country is home to just over 300,000 Britons, around a third of them aged over 65. The figure rises to around one million if Britons who live only part of the year in Spain are included.

“One of our top priorities for the negotiations is our citizens, and there will be no immediate changes to expat rights here in Spain in the interim,” Britain's ambassador to Spain, Simon Manley, said in a statement.

READ ALSO: Bienvenidos a Blighty: Spanish workers flock to UK

FACT CHECK: Spain's '£97 daily rule' isn't new nor a worry for British tourists

American playwright Eugene O’Neill once said: “There is no present or future – only the past, happening over and over again – now”.

In 2022, The Local Spain wrote a fact-checking article titled ‘Are UK tourists in Spain really being asked to prove €100 a day?‘, in which we dispelled the claims made in the British press about Spain’s alleged new rules for UK holidaymakers.

Two years on in 2024, the same eye-catching headlines are resurfacing in Blighty: “’Anti-British? Holiday elsewhere!’ Britons fume as tourists in Spain warned they may be subject to additional rules” in GB News, or “’They would be begging us to come back’: Brits vow to ‘boycott Spain’ over new £97 daily rule” in LBC.

The return of this rabble-rousing ‘news’ in the UK has coincided with calls within Spain to change the existing mass tourism model that’s now more than ever having an impact on the country’s housing crisis.

Even though Spaniards behind the protests have not singled out any foreign nationals as potential culprits, the UK tabloids have unsurprisingly capitalised on this and run headlines such as “Costa del Sol turns on British tourists”.

READ MORE: Why does hatred of tourists in Spain appear to be on the rise?

What is the so-called ‘£97 daily rule’?

Yes, there is theoretically a ‘£97 a day rule’, but it is not a new rule, nor one that applies only to UK nationals specifically, and not even one that Spain alone has imposed (all Schengen countries set their financial means threshold).

As non-EU nationals who are not from a Schengen Area country either (the United Kingdom never was in Schengen), British tourists entering Spain could have certain requirements with which to comply if asked by Spanish border officials.

Such requirements include a valid passport, proof of a return ticket, documents proving their purpose of entry into Spain, limits on the amount of time they can spend in Spain (the 90 out of 180 days Schengen rule), proof of accommodation, a letter of invitation if staying with friends or family (another controversial subject in the British press when it emerged) and yes, proof of sufficient financial means for the trip.

Third-country nationals who want to enter Spain in 2024 may need to prove they have at least €113,40 per day (around £97), with a minimum of €972 (around £830) per person regardless of the intended duration of the stay. It is unclear whether this could also possibly apply to minors.

The amount of financial means to prove has increased slightly in 2024 as it is linked to Spain’s minimum wage, which has also risen.

Financial means can be accredited by presenting cash, traveller’s checks, credit cards accompanied by a bank account statement, an up-to-date bank book or any other means that proves the amount available as credit on a card or bank account.

Have Britons been prevented from entering Spain for not having enough money?

There is no evidence that UK holidaymakers have been prevented from entering Spain after not being able to show they have £97 a day to cover their stay, nor any reports that they have been asked to show the financial means to cover their stay either.

17.3 million UK tourists visited Spain in 2023; equal to roughly 47,400 a day.

Even though British tourists have to stand in the non-EU queue at Spanish passport control, they do not require a visa to enter Spain and the sheer number of UK holidaymakers means that they’re usually streamlined through the process, having to only quickly show their passports.

The only occasional hiccups that have arisen post-Brexit have been at the land border between Gibraltar and Spain (issued that are likely to be resolved soon), and these weren’t related to demonstrating financial means.

Therefore, the British press are regurgitating alarmist headlines that don’t reflect any truth, but rather pander to the ‘they need us more than we need them’ mantra that gets readers clicking.

To sum up, there is a £97 a day rule, but it is not new, it has not affected any British tourists to date, and it is not specific to Spain alone to potentially require proof of economic means.

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