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BREXIT

ANALYSIS: Many Brits in Spain will soon have to make a life-changing choice

New rules due to Brexit could make it very hard for many Brits in Spain to ever return 'home', writes Graham Keeley in Barcelona. Meaning many will have to start think about the choice they must make.

ANALYSIS: Many Brits in Spain will soon have to make a life-changing choice
Even if my family wanted to swap the beach for rainy London life, could we? Photo: AFP

If you are a foreigner living in Spain, it is the question that lurks at the back of your mind: Should I stay or should I go?

Go on, admit it. However much you enjoy the pleasures of life here – and they are considerable – there is a part of all of us which wonders if this is it, forever? Might we, one day, decide to head home?

Being closer to elderly relatives or other family members might be the game changer. Or, perhaps given the post-Covid-19 economic outlook in Spain, which looks bleak, it might be easier to find work in one's own countries. Maybe if children head to university in another country, this might be a good reason to leave España.

Well, now it seems that if you are British at least, Brexit might force your hand.

The Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (Withdrawal) Act 2020, to give it its full name, may make things much harder for British nationals to go home if they have a foreign partner and family.

According to Fiona Godfrey, of the campaign group British in Europe, from 29 March 2022, the law will change and that is when things get tricky.

“After that if you want to come back with your non-British partner, you’ll need to earn £18,600 a year, a lot more if you have non-British kids,” Godfrey told the Guardian newspaper this week.

“And if your partner wants to move and be able to work in their own right immediately, they’ll have to meet the new points system.”

Godfrey said up to 40 per cent of Britons likely to want to return believe they would not fulfil this income requirement, and most of their partners did not do jobs on the Home Office list of approved professions. Associated costs like NHS surcharges or fees could run into thousands of pounds.

It means that British people living in Spain and other parts of Europe have until March 2022 to make what potentially will be a life-changing choice.

It is difficult to guess but many of the Brits I know here are settled and have no intention of returning to Britain.

But they may have made that decision based on the knowledge that they could go back if they wished and would face little red tape or problems.

Now, this freedom has been taken out of their hands thanks to Brexit, it may also change the way they look at things.

This raises a deeper issue. Where is home, after all? 

It seems some people have really made Spain their home and just regard Britain as somewhere they grew up and left when they were younger.

Others, myself included, have a complex relationship with Britain, which they always refer to as home, as if they were on a rather long holiday in Spain.

I feel like a tourist in Britain now which makes holidays or work trips there all the more fun.

Quite how things might be if I moved back for real with my family is a subject I have turned over in my mind from time to time. Who hasn't?

Could I face those grim months of January and February, the commuting, the daily obsession with the rain/weather or even life in Brexit Britain? A tough one. 


Photo: AFP

 

Then again, there would be plenty of reasons to be cheerful. The pubs, the gags, the fish n'chips, the McEwan's Export (which despite its name is not exported anywhere in the world). Readers, I could go on and on.

It would be a hard sell to a family used to the winter sun, living outside and who blanch at a few drops of rain. Oh, and then there is the beach. They might miss that a bit, I suppose. 

Whatever, I know plenty of Brits who say they do not know whether they will stay in Spain forever but are quite happy for now.

Equally, I know others who have headed home after they decided they had had enough of Spain, better opportunities came up at home or they had to head back to Britain to look after relatives.

I wonder if this legislation will concentrate the minds of Brits, not just those living in Spain but those elsewhere in Europe, about where their futures lie? 

I suspect unless they really have to head back, this will make many less inclined to go back to a country whose decision back in 2016 caused such disruption to the lives of millions.

 

 

 

Graham Keeley is a Spain-based freelance journalist who covered the country for The Times from 2008 to 2019. Follow him on Twitter @grahamkeeley .

 

 

 

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GIBRALTAR

UK soldiers expelled from Spain after crossing from Gibraltar posing as tourists

Spain has expelled four Royal Navy servicemen who crossed the Spain-Gibraltar border on foot three times in a single day while dressed in civilian clothing, with Spanish media claiming they were checking the porosity of the border.

UK soldiers expelled from Spain after crossing from Gibraltar posing as tourists

Spanish police expelled four British soldiers from Spain on Monday night, removing them from the country and sending them back to Gibraltar after it emerged that the four Royal Navy personnel had entered Spain illegally while “posing as tourists”, as the Spanish press has reported.

The incident comes a week after the British Navy carried out military drills in the waters surrounding Gibraltar, the British overseas territory that Spain still claims sovereignty of, and amid the seemingly never-ending negotiations between Spain and the UK to finally settle a post-Brexit deal.

READ ALSO: Gibraltar Brexit deal ‘close’ as Brits crossing into Spain use fake bookings

The expulsions, now reported in the Spanish press by Europa Sur and confirmed to El Periódico de España by official sources, occurred after the four soldiers arrived in Gibraltar on a civilian flight and entered into Spain. They also had return tickets via Gibraltar.

They then reportedly passed themselves off as tourists and entered Spain on foot, staying at a four-star hotel in La Línea de la Concepción, the town in the Cádiz province of Andalusia that borders Gibraltar.

Stranger yet is that they crossed the border at La Línea on up to three occasions in the space of a few hours.

READ ALSO: What Brits need to know before crossing the border from Gibraltar to Spain

Spanish authorities detected their presence because two of the soldiers tried to return to Gibraltar at night.

At the border, Spanish police officers enquired as to the reason for their entry, to which the soldiers replied that they were on their way to work and brandished British military documentation.

The police decided that their entry into Spain had been irregular because they did not meet the Schengen Borders Code requirements demanded of non-EU citizens entering EU territory.

According to Europa Sur, Spanish police then asked the two soldiers to call their colleagues in the hotel in order to collect their luggage and return to Gibraltar, which took place at midnight on Monday 18th March.

The Spanish press has stated that it is common for soldiers to try to stay in Spanish territory by concealing their military status and entering while posing as tourists.

The motive for the soldiers’ presence, particularly their repeated trips across the border, remains unknown.

The military drills in the area seem to suggest that the soldiers may have taken part in or be due to take part in further exercises and wanted to enter as tourists.

Spanish media also suggests that they could have been testing the porosity of the border, though these claims remain unsubstantiated.

Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status still remains unresolved. The EU and UK government are now onto their 18th round of treaty negotiations after the framework agreement between London and Madrid made on New Year’s Eve 2020 essentially ‘fudged’ the border issue, leaving Gibraltar’s status within the Schengen area undefined.

Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in late-2023 that “we are very, very close” to finalising a Brexit agreement.

“I would sign a deal with Britain over Gibraltar tomorrow,” Albares told journalists at the time. Yet no agreement was made, despite the Minister’s positivity, nor the appointment of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron as Foreign Secretary.

Albares’ comments came at a time when it was reported in the Spanish press that many UK nationals have been using fake hotel bookings in order to try and bypass the Schengen rules and trick their way through border checks.

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