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Spain moves to clear up travel confusion for returning British residents

Spanish authorities have tried to clear up confusion after numerous British residents in Spain were denied entry to the country when they were told their residency cards were not valid.

Published: 4 January 2021 12:05 CET
Updated: 4 January 2021 16:58 CET
Spain moves to clear up travel confusion for returning British residents
Image: AFP

Over the weekend, The Local reported that several British residents in Spain were denied boarding by airlines at Heathrow airport in the UK for their flight to return home.

Airline staff from British Airways and Iberia had told passengers that their green residency certificate, which features your NIE number, was no longer valid and that they would only be allowed to fly with a new TIE card as proof of residency.

Both the Spanish Embassy in the UK and the British Embassy in Madrid however have since clarified the situation, confirming that both the green residency certificate AND the TIE is valid for travel for British residents in Spain. 

READ MORE: Do Britons returning to EU need to worry if their passport is stamped?

After the incident, the British Embassy in Madrid tweeted:  “This should not be happening, the Spanish authorities have reconfirmed again this evening that the green residency document will be valid for travel to return to Spain as stated in our travel advice.”

The Spanish Government also reconfirmed to the British Embassy in Madrid on January 2nd, stating that the green residency document will be accepted for travel to return to Spain.

Brexit: What Brits in Europe need to know about travel from January 2021

Yesterday afternoon January 3rd, the Spanish Embassy in London confirmed this further by releasing the following statement and announcing a grace period for those who have not yet been able to collect their TIEs. 

Grace period

“The Embassy of Spain in London would like to clarify:

1. The certificado de Registro de Ciudadano de Union Europea (also known as the ‘green certificate’) and the new ‘Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero’ (TIE) are valid proof for residency for a UK nationals who wish to return to their homes in Spain. All travellers must also carry a valid passport.

2. We can also confirm that those UK nationals who can prove that they have started their registration process, but who do not yet have their new TIE card, should be allowed to board flights to return to Spain. The Government of Spain will put in place this measure for a grace period of seven days from January 4th 2021. The document ‘resguardo de solicitud o renovación de tarjeta de extranjero’ can be considered as acceptable evidence’.”

British residents in Spain have been having trouble collecting the new TIE certificates, due to an overload in the system and no appointments available to go and collect it.

The Spanish authorities have also created a printable pdf for British residents to show at the airports, confirming which residency documents are accepted and a photograph of each. It is available to download here.

The Iberia press office told The Local “On January 1st, we received an email from the Spanish border police saying that 'registration as European citizen' was not valid anymore to prove legal residency in Spain, in the case if British people. So, this could not be used to travel to Spain under Covid restrictions.

“But on then on January 2nd, at 7:30pm we received a second email saying that the document could be used if it wasn’t expired. So, it was just a confusion in the communication we received. Happily, it was clarified quickly. We are here to take people to their destinations, so these situations are very unpleasant to all, and specially for our passengers”. 

Iberia concluded by saying that as far as they know, this only affected one of their passengers and others that were affected were travelling with other airlines or codeshare tickets. 

The problem doesn’t seem to be affecting all flights however. British resident in Valencia Lara Dolden told The Local “I flew with easyJet on Saturday (January 2nd) and didn’t have any problems” and all she had to show were “my green (NIE) residency card, my Covid test results and a form I was given at the airport to fill out at each stage of the journey”.British resident in Spain Ruth Edwards who travelled from the UK to Spain yesterday, January 3rd also tweeted:

The British Government website currently states: “If you are a resident in Spain, you should carry your residence document (the green paper EU residence certificate or the new TIE), as well as your valid passport when you travel. From January 4th – 10th January inclusive, Spanish authorities have confirmed that a valid “resguardo de solicitud o renovación de tarjeta de extranjero” document will be accepted as evidence for those UK nationals who do not have a TIE card, but have started their Spanish residency process.

The Local contacted British Airways and Iberia for comment on the situation, but as of yet they haven't responded. 

Those British residents in Spain who have been denied boarding upon returning home however, should be able to claim compensation from their airline. 

Brexit: The two mistakes to look out for on your TIE Spanish residency card

 

Sue Wilson Chair of the Bremain in Spain group told The Local: “The Spanish authorities, the British Embassy and groups like Bremain in Spain have made every effort to communicate the travel requirements to all concerned. Those refused entry were complying with all that was required and were prevented from travel by those without any real authority to do so.

“It is one thing to have to kerb travel plans to and from the UK due to the pandemic. To limit valuable time spent with family, especially at Christmas, is bad enough, but to then be unable to return home to Spain must have been a frustrating and terrifying experience. It has sent shockwaves throughout the British community here in Spain. Kudos to the British Embassy for their swift action, which will hopefully prevent any repeat of this worrying incident”.

Spain restricted passenger travel from Britain on December 22nd due to the rapid spread of a new coronavirus strain identified in the UK, with exceptions for Spanish nationals and those legally resident in Spain and have now extended the restrictions until January 19th. 

There have also been reports of British citizens having similar difficulties trying to return home to other EU countries such as Italy, France and Germany.

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TOURISM

Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain’s mass tourism measures haven’t worked

Regions and cities around Spain have tried several ways to slow down the negative effects of mass tourism on local communities, largely without any luck and not addressing the major problem underpinning it.

Published: 3 May 2024 09:27 CEST
Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain's mass tourism measures haven't worked

The Spanish tourism sector continues to grow, but so does opposition to it.

Increasingly in Spain in recent years, anti-tourist sentiment (sometimes veering into anti-digital nomad sentiment) is on the rise, and much of it is born from frustrations about mass tourism and gentrification and their impact on Spaniards.

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

In 2000, 46.4 million tourists visited Spain. In those days, travellers (often from Northern Europe) flocked to the coasts to stay in the hotel blocks right on the beach. The classic Spanish holiday, if you will.

But things are changing. By 2023, that figure had nearly doubled to 85.3 million.

Yet during those 23 years hotel accommodation grew by just 7 percent. This statistic, cited by Juan Molas, President of Spain’s Tourist Board and cited in Spanish daily El País, reveals a lot about the Spanish tourism sector and why efforts to try and combat mass tourism (or its negative effects, at least) have failed so far.

Molas’ statistic begs an obvious question: where do the rest of those tourists now stay, if not in traditional hotels?

Increasingly, in short-term accommodation such as tourist rentals and, in recent years, Airbnbs.

READ MORE: ‘Get the f*ck out of here’ – Málaga plastered with anti-tourism stickers

There have been regular protests against mass tourism around Spain in recent months, notably in places like the Canary Islands and Málaga.

Anti-tourist graffiti has appeared in places such as Barcelona, Valencia, Granada, the Canary and Balearic Islands, places that face the brunt of mass tourism in Spain. Locals complain that the proliferation of tourist rental accommodation depletes the affordable housing stock, inflates the local property market, and prices them out of their own neighbourhoods.

Often, these sorts of tourist rental accommodations are unlicensed and illegal. In Madrid, for example, there are tens of thousands of tourist apartments in Madrid available through platforms such as Airbnb and Booking, and yet recent findings show that barely five percent have a municipal tourist licence in order to operate legally. 

“Neither the central administration, nor the regions, nor the town councils have done their homework on the illegal [accommodation] offer, which is the most important scourge of tourism in Spain,” Molas says.

Though the problem seems obvious to many, including experts like Molas, some regions of Spain have focused on other ways to try and limit mass tourism… and they haven’t really worked so far.

READ ALSO:

Tourist tax

Tourist taxes made big news in recent weeks when Venice began charging tourists on day trips to visit the tourist hotspot.

In Spain, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands are the only two regions that have implemented tourist taxes so far, although not with the express aim of reducing the number of visitors.

Rather, Catalonia taxes overnight stays while the Balearic Islands taxes possible environmental damage. Visitor arrivals have continued to rise despite the taxes.

In the thirteen years since the tax was introduced in Barcelona, tourist numbers have risen from 14.5 million to 18 million. Importantly, a moratorium on hotel construction has been in place in the Catalan capital since 2017, which has led to an exponential growth in tourist rental accommodation in the city.

In the case of the Balearic Islands, the annual number of tourist arrivals has increased from 13 to 14 million in the six years in which the so-called ‘ecotax’ has been in force on the islands.

Limiting cruise ships

Coastal and island resorts in Spain have also tried to combat mass tourism by limiting the number of cruise ships allowed to dock there.

In 2022, Palma de Mallorca became the first destination in Spain and the second in Europe, after Dubrovnik in Croatia, to make an agreement with major cruise ship companies to establish a limit of three cruise ships per day, and specified that only one of them could bring more than 5,000 passengers ashore.

In places like Mallorca but also in Barcelona, enormous cruise ships previously docked and released thousands of tourists into the city at once.

But once again, like with the tourist taxes introduced, a limit on cruise ship numbers, although welcome, misses the point — cruise ship customers sleep on the ship, not in the real problem underpinning Spain’s mass tourism model: accommodation.

Tourist accommodation

Varying legislation restricting Airbnb-style rentals has already been introduced in recent years in cities such as Valencia, Palma, Seville, Tarifa, Madrid, Barcelona, and San Sebastián, with varying degrees of success. 

The number of short-term rental accommodation has exploded in Spain. They are particularly popular with remote workers and among digital nomads with the foreign spending power to price out locals. Recent data shows that in the old town of Seville, over half of residential homes are used for tourism. In the area of ​​Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, 28.3 percent are tourist apartments, while the figure stands at 18.3  percent in the centre of Valencia.  

READ MORE: How Spain’s Asturias region plans to limit short-term holiday lets

Tourist taxes and limits on cruise ship numbers are welcome. But they appear to be doing little to tackle the true underlying problem with Spain’s mass tourism model.

For now, measures are being rolled out largely on a regional level, but it may require the national government to step in and legislate, as it did when it scrapped the Golden Visa earlier this year, although again the effectiveness of this measure has also been questioned. 

READ MORE: Is Spain’s decision to axe golden visa about housing or politics?

Increasing the social housing stock more generally would also go some way to alleviate the pressure on Spaniards struggling to pay rent or even find a home.

Tourism is a double edged sword in Spain. The tourism sector has long made up a significant proportion of Spanish GDP and provided employment for locals, but the model it currently has is outdated, it inflates property markets, angers Spaniards, and creates tension between tourists and locals.

In 2023, international visitors spent €108 billion in Spain, 17 percent more than in 2019. Spanish travel industry association Exceltur forecasts that in 2024 it will surpass €200 billion for the first time.

READ ALSO: ‘The island can’t take it anymore’ – Why Tenerife is rejecting mass tourism

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