The UK Minister of Transports, Grant Shapps, has confirmed that holiday islands in Spain, including the Canary Islands, are being considered separately from Spain for their green list of destinations for holidaymakers, and will be from June 7th if it happens.
This is the latest in a line of positive announcements in previous days, after the president of the Canary Islands, Angel Victor Torres, said yesterday that he expects this to happen before the end of May, and the UK Secretary of State for Aviation, Robert Courts, proposed a regional approach "where possible" for destinations to be added to the green list, in relation to cases such as the two Spanish archipelagos, i.e. the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands.
At present, people from England can holiday in green list countries without having to quarantine on their return, but travel operators and airlines have been pushing to be allowed to fly to the islands when the rest of Spain is on the amber list, which could mean people could holiday in the Canary Islands even if mainland Spain stays on the amber list.
Grant Shapps told the transport select committee earlier today that he has "asked The Joint Biosecurity Centre to consider islands within their criteria and where possible they would look to include if them if facts stacked up".
When pushed on whether this was possible by the review on June 7th, he replied: "yes, technically that is possible, but I actually don't know because I don't have the data yet as to whether islands make the grade."
Watch this space.
