Hoteliers in Mallorca say they have given up hope of UK tourists returning this summer and are closing their doors as a result.
Spain was abruptly struck off the UK’s travel corridor list last month and cases have continued to mount since then, with nearly 26,000 new infections announced in the last seven days alone.
With only a few weeks of the summer holiday season left, hotels say they cannot compete with destinations such as Turkey and Greece where travel routes are still open and which have been luring British holidaymakers with cut-price offers.
The four-star Fergus Style Soller Beach in Mallorca’s Puerto de Soller is among those to close – leaving some tourists in the lurch shortly before they were due to arrive.
Spain has seen a worrying rise in coronavirus cases in recent weeks, with nearly 26,000 cases recorded in the last seven days – up from fewer than 3,000 a week in June
The four-star Fergus Style Soller Beach (pictured) in Mallorca’s Puerto de Soller has closed its doors – leaving some tourists in the lurch shortly before they were due to arrive
Maria Frontera, the head of the Mallorca hotel federation, said that without the lifting of the quarantine, hotels would now start to close their doors.
Elsewhere, Tenerife is still pressing for a reversal of UK policy because the Canary Islands holiday season continues into the autumn ‘so there is still time left’, according to the island’s government.
The Balearic and Canary Islands were initially exempt from the Foreign Office warning against non-essential travel but it was later extended to cover them.
Staff at the Sóller Beach told customers: ‘We are coming to you with not such great news, dear friends: due to the last COVID measures taken by UK Government, we have no other choice than close the hotel for this season.
‘We are devastated and we know that many of you will be too. We hope you all keep safe, positive and looking forward to come as soon as things get better, if not this year, the next one.’
Some visitors said they too were dismayed by the news, with one holidaymaker saying she had just one week to find an alternative.
Mallorca’s hoteliers said they had pinned their hopes on negotiations between island leaders and the British government.
However, they fear that the continuing increase in coronavirus cases over the last fortnight has sealed their fate.
In addition, airlines Jet2, TUI Fly and EasyJet announced that they were cancelling many of their flights into August.
People wearing face masks walk down a shopping street in the Las Delicias neighbourhood of Zaragoza in Spain on Monday
According to the latest data from Turespaña, since the UK government reimposed quarantine, reservations for Spain have dropped by 80 per cent.
The fall includes holidays in winter 2020/21 and summer 2021 as worried holidaymakers call off plans to travel abroad next year.
Hoteliers on the Costa del Sol estimate that 90 per cent of British bookings have now been cancelled.
‘We trust that the quarantine will be reversed so that the tourist activity, which had been restarted, with encouraging results, can be reactivated for the winter campaign,’ said tourism councillor José Gregorio Martín Plata.
Spain has suffered 25,926 cases in the last seven days, up from 18,272 the week before and fewer than 3,000 per week as recently as June.
The total has now risen above that in Britain to become the highest in Western Europe, prompting criticism of the Spanish government.
While France, Germany and Italy have also seen upticks in cases in recent weeks, Spain’s spike is by far the largest among those countries.
There are currently more than 500 outbreak clusters in Spain, according to the health ministry.
The ministry’s emergencies coordinator Fernando Simon said on Monday that there are cases of community transmission in some places that are ‘not perfectly controlled’ but he said they had ‘gradually subsided’ in recent days.
Spain’s government defended its response to the coronavirus pandemic on Monday, saying ‘appropriate measures’ were being taken in co-ordination with the regions.
‘The data shows that we are being very active in tracking and detecting the virus,’ the government said in a statement.
The government also said it had tested nearly 7.5million people since the start of the pandemic, with over 400,000 tested in the past week alone.
A healthcare worker dressed in protective gear takes samples from a woman at the La Jota health centre in Zaragoza on Monday
Official figures show that 65 people have died from the virus in the last week, bringing the total death toll to 28,576.
Spain imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns after the death toll surged in March and April, but the state of emergency has since been lifted.
In a letter published in medical journal The Lancet, a group of Spanish health experts called for an independent probe into of the government’s handling of the crisis.
More than 50,000 health workers have been infected, and nearly 20,000 deaths were in nursing homes, the authors said.
The health experts pointed the finger at a range of errors including poor co-ordination between Madrid and regional governments.
An an ageing population, vulnerable groups experiencing health and social inequalities, and ‘a lack of preparedness in nursing homes’ were also cited.
‘These problems were exacerbated by the effects of a decade of austerity that had depleted the health workforce and reduced public health and health system capacities,’ the authors said.
One signatory, public health professor Ildefonso Hernandez Aguado, said a lack of qualified tracing staff was allowing the disease to spread unseen.
‘Some regions have not understood that this was the key in the months after the lockdown and in the long term,’ he said.
Aguado stressed that authorities should begin hiring and training new personnel as soon as possible.
He also pointed the finger at Spain’s highly social culture: ‘This is a country that doesn’t understand holding a celebration, or taking a holiday if you’re not going to share them’.