This might not be the wisest move ever by Spain:
Holidaymakers may be forced to prove that they have at least £760 to spend in order to enter Spain this summer as it implements new restrictions that group British tourists in the same category as those travelling from a “third country” outside of the EU.
The Spanish government has said that following Brexit, British tourists hoping to enter the country may need to show they have enough money for their stay – a minimum of €100 (£85) per person per day, and have €900 (£761) available in funds.
A family of four staying in Spain for a week could therefore need proof of at least £3,141 before being allowed entry into the country. Tourists that come from outside of the European Union may be asked to use cash, cheques, travellers’ cheques or credit cards, as well as a bank statement as evidence of funds.
Spanish border agents may also ask holidaymakers to show an onward or return ticket, or supply proof of accommodation in order to be accepted into the country.
There are plenty of other countries out there that Brits can go on holiday to. Some number of them will. Whether this is to the advantage of Spain, well……
Yes, but there’s only one Ibiza, one Majorca, and one Torremolinos. You can vacation elsewhere, but it all depends on how much sex you want to have.
@ Southerner
Well, there is always Agia Napa… 😉
I think the message from France and Spain is just go on holiday in the UK.
As someone who hates flying I wish more countries would take this attitude then I would easily win all discussions with my wife about travelling.
Since I don’t travel to Spain (or France), I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.
However I do seem to remember BiS talking about how the tourist industry in Spain is stuffed.
Every country has rules like this, but they are practically never enforced.
Actually, the UK does enforce its version of the rule. True story – at channel tunnel, 19 year old border guard, Bearer of 5 GCSEs at grade C, and Wearer of The Hi-Viz Jacket of Total Power, leans into my car, my UK passport in her hand, and asks if I have a return ticket! I think better of referring said Stasi goon to Her Majesty’s secretary of state’s request on page one.
I had that at the ferry, once. Stopped by Border Force at Dover, they asked me where I was going.
“Home.”
They bloody didn’t like that answer and searched the car.
Cue the Portuguese Tourism Minister: “YES! Get in, my son! You absolute beauty!”
(Or whatever the appropriate Portuguese expression might be…)
DK
I wonder how selectively this would be enforced – another excuse to stuff up the Gib border when it suits them?
The first time I went to Spain (on a Clarkson’s Long Weekend in Lloret), the rule was that you couldn’t take more than £50 out of the UK. That was alright by me, as I’d never held £50 in my hand, and the holiday – air fares and hotel cost £14 a head, full board.
I can’t imagine that a Spanish holiday costs less than £100 per day per person nowadays. I’ll have to see the Benidorm series again to see if they discuss money.
Presumably, anything pre-paid to the holiday company counts?
Kills off the student backpacker trade.
(….that might be a good thing?)
I’m sure BiFR is right. The key word is “may”:
Holidaymakers may be forced to prove that they have at least £760 to spend
Strongly doubt that Spanish immigration chappies, or their political masters, are interested in making everybody on the 737 from Manchester count out their giro money. The press is just doing its usual thing of spreading fear and anger.
Of course, the Spaniards can’t openly reassure us that the point of this law is to intercept potential freeloaders from Africa.
Selective enforcement is no fun though. Your holiday could be ruined on the whim of a border agent who is having a bad day. Having clear rules is good, actually.
Andrew – never go to the US of States then (not that you’d want to in its present sorry state, like Paris it’s a sorry shadow of what it used to be).
American border guards are weapons-grade arseholes, and treat you like a convict for having the temerity to fly into Newark. Every other country on the planet, except maybe North Korea, greets tourists with either a smiling welcome or polite indifference. The Yanqui wants to paw through your wife’s knickers and bark intrusive questions at you after a horrifying 7-hour flight and equally horrifying queues waiting to be interrogated by armed simpletons with badges. Getting dragged into a little room for additional investigation by DHS is a regular occurrence. I, personally, have made friends with several American drug-sniffing dogs.
I don’t think any of our Euro pals has it in them to treat people the way Americans do. Maybe the French, but only when they’re on their period.
Steve,
Talk like a British butler, they love that.
@Steve
Avoid JFK and Newark. If you’re going to NYC (why?) then fly to Boston and get the train. Time saved in the airport means that you’ll probably only be an hour later at your hotel, and the rail journey along the Connecticut coast is actually quite pleasant — unlike getting from JFK/Newark into downtown Manhattan.
Similarly if you’re ever going to LA, fly to SFO and then get a short-haul rather than doing immigration at LAX.
LAX isn’t. What a kerfuffle and the blithering idiots put you through all the immigration rigmarole even if all you are doing is stopping for a pee before you continue on your flight to NZ. (Or at least they used to: it’s been a while since we made the trip.)
A kiwi friend of ours won’t use flights that go to the US anymore. He flies the other way round using Singapore Airlines. So much better, he says. Google shows a flight by way of Vancouver. That might be better than LAX too though I’m not sure I’d want to touch down in Turdwater territory. He might lock me up for swearing on the internet.
Hmm, a thought.
Fly into Spain, flash your 1,000 euro wad at the customs nerk.
What happens on the way out? If you have 200, 100 euro left?
Short jump – are they short of physical cash in Spain?
Don’t understand what all the fuss is about, especially coming from the Daily Mail. This is exactly the Brexit the Mail campaigned for.
Did anyone who voted Out not know these EU rules on 3rd countries? The rules predated the UK referendum and anyone visiting Japan or the USA will have seen similar entry conditions there.
My experience of travelling within the EU since we actually left is that the airport you use makes all the difference. Seville was near wholly automated (bar covid checks) and it took barely 20 minutes from landing to hailing a cab. Travel from Italy is another story, lots of queuing for manual inspections.
Once passport controls are fully automated EU wide, and their version of the American ESTA is in place, there should be no time constraints at all.
They’re not going to enforce it. Was in Majorca at the start of the month, and after passport control the covid check we all had to pass through was two guys at a desk shouting hurry up, keep moving. You flashed your app, pieces of paper whatever as you wizzed by and they made a tick on a bit of A4. “Hey, Jose, did you check the covid certs? Yes boss, 150 passengers and they all had one…”
Doc, Matt, DM – good advice (well, apart from the butler part, idk about that)
I hate flying now and don’t want to do it ever again if I can avoid it. BA Baracus did nothing wrong.
No direct quotes from anyone in Spain to suggest this might actually be enforced. It would be wildly impractical and not even the pinko lackwits running Spain want to discourage 18m Brit visitors.
It would be sensible, however, for France & Spain to make some encouraging noises or they stand to lose billions in tourist revenue. Portugal is explicitly making travel easier for British passport holders and will no doubt benefit.
anyone visiting Japan or the USA will have seen similar entry conditions there.
Lots of places have similar rules but don’t enforce them unless (presumably) you look a bit dodgy. You do need proof of accommodation and a return ticket to get a Mainland China tourist visa.
Our experience at LAX has convinced us never to transit through that place for any reason ever again. Rude Stasi, very long lines, abominable.
Came back from Yurp around Easter time this year via Dallas. They appear to have put in place a system which makes use of the info collected as the flight departs from Paris so that the grilling at the immigration desk is about 30 seconds. Very fast, very smooth. Bravo!
Shades of entering East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie & having to buy Ostmarks. (Unconvertible back to Deutschmarks)
@Boganboy
Oh, undoubtedly stuffed. There’s about half the spending there was in ’19. What foreign tourists we have is predominantly families & retired couples. Neither are spenders.
I don’t think Spain does economics in any recognisable form. They certainly don’t understand optimal pricing. They’re hypnotised in extracting the maximum out of each commercial transaction. They also think in percentages, which is not the way to run a business. There are input costs, which is money. And what you sell for. Which is money & decided by the buyer. And you try to make a living between the two. Percentages are just interesting numbers when you’re looking at last year’s figures. You don’t try & price by percentage of inputs.
At the moment the dagos have hiked prices to try & recover what they missed out on in the past two years. As if they’re entitled to extract the money out of this year’s tourists. They’re determined to make themselves uncompetitive. Not saying the domestic markets are any different. Any decent entrepreneur can run rings around them. This one does, when he can be bothered.
IO flew through Miami to Caracas once. When a project in Buenos Aires came up a few years later I told the travel agent I didn’t care how long it took, I wasn’t transiting through the USA. I ended up flying via Madrid.
I flew to the US many times in another life plus a couple of tourist visits since, and I’ve never had a problem with the Immigration guys, or Customs either. Perhaps they now realise that I’m an all-round good egg. It’s the queueing that’s the real pain.
The most amusing interaction was on a trip to a meeting, probably on the West Coast in the 90s. The guy asked what are you here for and I said a meeting on digital TV. The guy then asked me “What TV screen ratio, 4:3 or 16:9, do you think will be more common in the future?”. I thought WTF? then said “16:9 definitely”. He then explained he was interested in the tech personally.
When I related this tale to some of the other guys at the meeting, they were amazed. I don’t think it was a trick question but no doubt Immigration do use that technique.
“And what you sell for. Which is money & decided by the buyer. ”
I’ve tried to explain this to any number of dagos, without success. FFS! Any time there’s a surplus, the buyer decides the price because they’re the one with the money. Dagos seem to think they’re entitled to the price they’ve set.
Happened with golf club charges. Less golfers so they hiked prices to maintain profits. You can imagine how well that worked out for them. Hotel rooms that were 80€/night previously are currently 200.
Back in the 1980’s I flew into Boston on the same plane as my Dad. Independent travel, we met by chance in the Heathrow departure lounge. Except his employer wasn’t cheapskate and he’d cleared immigration hours before cattle class me got there. Even in 1984 they had enough computers to detect this: “Didn’t your father come through here 2 hours ago? Why are you separated?”
Sounds like a million to one chance, so Stasi suitably suspicious.
Except Dad was travelling to Boston every month or so, and had said the flight to get was the Sunday Luchtime TWA. So when I needed to go to Boston…
Probability about 1 in 5, not 1 in a million.
I wonder how I’d fare nowadays…Orange suit and free trip to Cuba.
A year after 9/11 I went through JFK in and out. Grim experience, like maximum security prison. Tourists, business travellers and customers NOT WELCOME.
Even so, most of the people are nice, it’s just all the multiple Stasi they need to get rid off.
Maybe after CWII.
Never had a problem with the US (except the queues, but everyone gets that). A raised eyebrow when I was traveling back and forth weekly is as bad as it got. No free trip to Cuba.
Those of us that have to go to Joisey don’t have much choice of airport.
Hotel rooms that were 80€/night previously are currently 200.
I know a group of people who were planning a trip to Ibiza this summer but who have gone elsewhere due to stupid prices.
That must be €20k not spent in Spain. They can’t be the only ones.
BiS: Shades of entering East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie & having to buy Ostmarks. (Unconvertible back to Deutschmarks)
True. Not only where they exchanged at par against DEM but you had to surrender the surplus Marks on your way out and contribute to fraternal development projects in socialist LDCs. I still have a smuggled out 2M coin, a hollow aluminium thing a bit like the ancient 5 centime coin in France. It’s a reminder of a jolly hour in the Stasi HQ in Leipzig in a room like the end sequence of Callan, complete with brick walls and naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Avoid JFK and Newark. If you’re going to NYC (why?) then fly to Boston and get the train. Time saved in the airport means that you’ll probably only be an hour later at your hotel, and the rail journey along the Connecticut coast is actually quite pleasant — unlike getting from JFK/Newark into downtown Manhattan.
Similarly if you’re ever going to LA, fly to SFO and then get a short-haul rather than doing immigration at LAX.
EWR is far better than JFK, shorter immigration queues and the train into Manhattan is quick and easy (although if you’re travelling with someone who hasn’t been to NYC before, Hoboken and the ferry to WTC is an impressive way to arrive). LAX is the pits and they still don’t get the idea of international transfers: “Where is your first night’s stay in the US?” “England.”
I once flew in to JFK shortly after the death in NYC of a leading (very, very orthodox) Rabbi. There were thousands of guys (definitely not goys) in big black hats and ringlets arriving from all four corners, and immigration was just a total shit-show (even more so than usual).
There does seem to be a pandemic of lunacy going around. The Dutch governments wants to cripple their major money earner, farming. The Spanish want to cripple their major money earner, tourism. Canada are talking of punishing farmers. Ceylon is in an organic mess. Most governments seem to want to punish people driving cars.
Now all of these things might make sense globally – but bringing them in without planning, that’s where the lunacy creeps in.
DJ: They don’t even make sense globally.
You ever find anything to spend your Ostmarks on TMB? I always got the feeling it was the same money going round & round. It was just you who had to carry it that day.
I flew into Chicago (ok it was about 8 years ago) and it was fine. Queue wasn’t too long, border guards were indifferent at worst, mainly polite and helpful.
Airport wasn’t too busy.
@Steve – “American border guards are weapons-grade arseholes,”
You may find them less so if you use preclearance. This is where you do everything required to enter the US in a foreign country (so the US personnel don’t have the special powers that they would on US soil). There are only six countries where you can do this: Aruba, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, and the UAE. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_border_preclearance
Charles
Absolutely. Go via Dublin and do all the checks Paddy side makes it a doddle on arrival. Of course you have to get to Dublin first.
We flew to Mexico via Houston. The passport people were OK, the other staff were terrible, and the queues were dreadfully long, both ways.
We weren’t even landing. They had no need to pass us through immigration at all. Other countries don’t bother, and I have never had a good explanation for why the US has to waste all that time and money.
Preclearance is ace, can confirm. Of course, if you do it in Canada then you first have to get through Air Canada check-in and airport security which make one weep and beg for the relative competence and user friendliness of the TSA and America domestic airlines…