The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, blamed yesterday the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, for the exclusion of Spain from the British list of safe tourist destinations.
González Laya pronounced these words during the plenary session of the Congress in response to a parliamentary question from the MP Agustín Almodóbar, of the Popular Group, on the strategy followed by the Government to try to convince the United Kingdom, without success, that Spain is a safe tourist destination for the British.
Last Friday, London announced a “green list” of twelve countries and territories to which travel will be facilitated as of May 17. This list includes Portugal and Gibraltar, but excludes Spain, France and Greece, which appear in the “amber” classification. The list, which will be reviewed every three weeks, includes the countries en bloc and does not provide for any differentiated treatment by regions, such as the Canary Islands or the Balearic Islands. According to Almodóbar, the Government is putting “the tourist season at risk” with its inability to prevent the British restrictions.
In her response, González Laya assured that the Government is developing a communication and information effort with the British authorities to transmit them “confidence” about the policies carried out by the central Administration and the autonomous communities to fight against the pandemic. However, she regretted, “suddenly, an autonomous community arrives with a president at the head who says that what matters in this country is freedom, what matters is going out for a drink, what matters is going to the bulls, what matters is mobility when it wants and where it wants”.
“What’s more, those who say that you have to respect some rules of social distance and that you have to be prudent and responsible are accused of being communists”, she continued. “And what happens is that the figures of that community, by the way one of the worst in our country, count for the average of the country, they count for the average that the British use to place Spain in their traffic light”, she added. “If you really care about tourism, if your group cares about tourism, make sure that we control the pandemic, that you invite citizens to respect the guidelines, to be responsible. That’s how we’re all going to get the UK to give us the green light. If you don’t do that, we don’t need your crocodile tears”, she concluded.
In response to these words, Ayuso herself wrote yesterday on her Twitter account that “the socialists” try to “stigmatize Madrid society” through “the institutions” because “they do not understand what happened in the 4M elections”.
You deserve Spain
The new parliamentary scuffle coincided with the presentation, at the Parador Nacional de Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), of a new Government campaign to reinforce the position of Spain as “first holiday destination of the main issuing markets”.
The campaign Te mereces España (You deserve Spain), presented by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, and the general director of Turespaña, Miguel Sanz, is aimed at the markets of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands and Poland, and aims to attract international tourists in the context of “the exceptional situation caused by the pandemic”, according to the Government.
The campaign will run between May and July in almost exclusively digital format and through social networks. The launch, which will go well beyond the digital format, will be developed primarily in the United Kingdom, France and Germany through print advertising space in major newspapers and travel and lifestyle magazines and through outdoor advertising on digital street furniture, buses and giant screens located in emblematic places.
