The Diplomat
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will send a plane to India today to facilitate the return of more than 200 Spaniards, which will practically conclude the repatriation operations of travellers from the Asian country.
The flight, with capacity for almost 300 passengers and in which citizens from other European countries will return, will be carried out under the European Mechanism of Civil Protection as there is no other possible alternative. The aircraft will depart from Madrid to New Delhi and then continue to Goa and, after the mandatory rest periods for the crew, will return to the Spanish capital on Sunday.
In India there are a total of 232 Spanish tourists who were surprised by the restrictions on mobility imposed after the COVID-19 pandemic and who had expressed to the Embassy their interest in leaving the country and no longer had any commercial alternatives to do so. The strong dispersion of the travellers forced an exhaustive exercise of concentration of different points of the vast Indian geography to, in turn, proceed to their return from Goa and New Delhi.
“With this operation, the Spanish Embassy in India would have already facilitated the departure from the country to most of the Spanish travellers who had requested it, although there have also been groups of people who have refused to move to one of its concentration points for their subsequent departure and others who, due to the rush, did not have the capacity to arrive on time”, the Ministry reported. Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya spoke on Tuesday with her Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to ask her country to open up its airspace to allow for the repatriations.
Another operation that can also be considered completed, except in specific cases, is that of the Spanish Embassy in Ecuador, which has allowed the return to Spain of 984 Spaniards and 462 Europeans. The Spanish Embassy in Cuba has also assisted the return of those who have requested it. A total of 1,620 Spaniards have left the island since 17 March and only three have not been able to do so for specific reasons. The last three Iberia flights from Havana to Madrid have already travelled with 324 empty seats.
The Spanish Embassy in Peru has also already made the bulk of the operations with the arrival, between Wednesday and Thursday, of 700 passengers. Besides, the last three flights coordinated by the Embassy of Spain in the Dominican Republic have facilitated the return of 750 Spaniards and two other operations of the Embassy in Argentina are still pending with two flights to Buenos Aires that would take Argentines and return with Spaniards next week.
