The UK government decision to impose a two week quarantine on everyone arriving from Spain was “unjust”, the country’s prime minister has said.
Pedro Sánchez said tourists in most Spanish regions would be safer from coronavirus than in the UK, and he was hoping Britain would rethink its move.
He said talks were ongoing after the UK also advised against all but essential travel to the whole of Spain.
Labour said the government’s handling of the restrictions had been “chaotic”.
But the UK government said it has no plans to change its decision to reintroduce the quarantine measures from last Sunday – with Boris Johnson’s official spokesman warning that “no travel is risk-free during this pandemic”.
On Monday, the Foreign Office extended its travel advice for Spain, now telling people to avoid non-essential journeys to the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as mainland Spain.
In an interview on Spain’s Telecinco TV network, Mr Sánchez said he was hoping to convince the UK government to change its decision to remove Spain from a list of countries exempt from quarantine rules.
“We are talking with British authorities to try to get them to reconsider a measure that, in our opinion, is not well adjusted if we consider epidemiological criteria of Spain, particularly in some tourist destinations in our country.”
He said the UK had made an “error” by considering the infection rate for the whole country.
Spain’s prime minister added that “64.5% of the new cases registered are in two territories” and in most of Spain the prevalence of Covid-19 was “very much inferior to the numbers registered in the United Kingdom”.
The rate of infection in Spain is 35.1 cases per 100,000 people, while the UK is at 14.7, according to the latest figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.