The Diplomat
The newly appointed Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, yesterday held his first telephone interview with his UK counterpart, Dominic Raab, just the same day that the British Government decided to remove the Balearic Islands from the list of safe destinations on which they had been included two weeks ago.
“Productive conversation with my British counterpart, Dominic Raab”, Albares announced via Twitter account. “We have talked about our post-Brexit strategic relationship”, he added, without further details.
The meeting took place just a week after a conversation between Raab and the former Spanish minister, Arancha González Laya, in the course of which the Foreign Office secretary personally announced to her that, from next July 19, British citizens traveling to countries on the amber list (according to the British traffic light of international mobility by COVID-19), including Spain, will no longer have to keep quarantine on their return as long as they have received the full guideline of the vaccine .
In any case, the announcement of yesterday’s conversation coincided with an update by the Foreign Office of the recommendations for travel to Spain. Apart from recalling that “Spain, including the Canary Islands, is on the amber list for entering England”, the update indicates that the Balearic Islands, which are still “on the green list for entering England”, will “move to the amber list for entering England” from 4 a.m. on Monday, July 19. The news comes at the height of the COVID-19 spike in the UK and the Balearic Islands, where yesterday reached the highest number of daily infections since the pandemic began in March 2020.
The British authorities included the Balearic Islands in the green list of safe travel by COVID last June 24, but the rest of Spain remained on the amber list. It was the first time that London took into account regional specificities when drawing up its traffic light, which until then included the countries as a block.
