Iran Press/Europe: Sanchez was speaking just after Britain dealt a new blow to any hopes of reviving Spain’s tourism by extending guidance advising against all non-essential travel, which already applied to mainland Spain, to include the Balearic and Canary Islands, according to Reuters.
“The error is to have looked at the incidence (of the virus) in the country as a whole,” Sanchez said in an interview with Telecinco television.
The rebound in cases is focused in two regions, Catalonia and Aragon, while “in the rest of the territories, the incidence is much lower, (lower) even than that of the United Kingdom,” he said.
Last year, Britons made up over a fifth of foreign visitors to Spain, which relies heavily on tourism.
The Socialist prime minister said the British government had given Spain no heads up about the quarantine move.
Earlier on Monday, Spain’s hard-hit hotels had offered to pay for foreign tourists to take coronavirus tests, in an effort to lure back visitors worried by a fresh wave of cases and put off by Britain’s sudden imposition of a two-week quarantine.
Since ending its nationwide lockdown a month ago, Spain has been grappling with a rapid proliferation of new cases.
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