The President of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, assured this Monday that "today is going to be key" to resolving the situation with the United Kingdom, since the Spanish and British Governments will hold a meeting in which the epidemiological situation of Spain will be presented, as well as that of the archipelagos, to avoid the quarantine of British tourists who decide to travel to the islands.
Torres has stressed that the British market is "fundamental" for the Canary Islands, since together with Germany and Italy, they are the main countries sending tourists to the archipelago. In fact, he stressed that in a "normal year", where there was no pandemic, the Canary Islands would be receiving between 14 and 15 million tourists, the "majority of them British".
Therefore, he admitted that the recommendation from the United Kingdom that they "not" travel to the Canary Islands or have to quarantine upon their return due to the coronavirus is "a blow now" that was "recovering, little by little, the tourist pulse".
In any case, it is expected that this Monday, July 27, British tourists will finally arrive through the main tour operators such as TUI or Jet2, which although they had warned of the possibility of suspending any flight with Spain, finally left the archipelagos excluded. In this regard, Torres has thanked this decision and pointed out that "it is logical", because the contagiousness is "6 positives per 100,000 inhabitants" in the Canary Islands.
Torres hopes that the conversations this weekend will "finish bearing fruit" in the meeting scheduled for this Monday between the Government of Spain and the United Kingdom, since although he stated that there are communities with more contagiousness than others, "common sense has to be a basic premise", because he believes that the British Government adopted the decision "quickly".
Likewise, the Canarian president has highlighted that the situation of the archipelagos "is different" from that of other Spanish communities, since you can only enter by plane or by boat, as well as understanding that the development of the pandemic is "more favorable" than in most European countries. Torres hopes that the situation will be resolved because he admits that if it is not, it would be "an almost unrecoverable blow".
