According to the Spanish government, a long line at Barajas Airport in Madrid is working to hire more staff to deal with the surge in tourism after the Covid-19 restrictions have been relaxed. , Should be relaxed.
With an increase of 500 new employees, more than 1,700 employees will work at Spain’s busiest airports, including Madrid and Barcelona, to control the significant increase in foreign tourist flow over the past few weeks.
The long lines of Madrid are similar to problems at airports in Amsterdam, Great Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere in Europe. This is due to a shortage of staff and an increase in travel as the pandemic eases.
In the UK, daily cancellations from British Airways and easyJet exacerbate passenger distress, and industrial activity in France and Italy is also causing turmoil.
To further ease the pressure on arrival, another line will be set up in Madrid for British tourists, the largest group of foreign tourists to Spain, when they will be able to use electronic passport gates. Police sources told Reuters.
British travelers still need to stamp their passports after using the electronic gate, sources added.
Spain lifted Covid’s travel restrictions on travelers in the EU and Schengen areas last week. This means that people arriving from these areas no longer need to present a digital Covid certificate or fill out a Spanish health care form.
However, even if you enter Spain from outside the EU or Schengen, including the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, you will still need to present or fill out a valid Covid certificate.
According to the National Statistics Bureau, 6.1 million tourists visited Spain in April. That’s about 10 times the 629,000 people who visited in April a year ago.
According to the Interior Ministry, about 18.7 million travelers will pass through Madrid’s airport in June this year.
The airline Iberia complained about the delay and confusion in passport management at Barajas Airport in Madrid, saying that about 15,000 passengers have missed the plane since March 1.
However, the Spanish Ministry of Interior denied that no one missed the plane at the airport.
“In recent months, the state police have not registered any complaints about the cancellation,” the ministry said in a statement.
“There are no queues or delays beyond the temporal context created by the simultaneous occurrence of multiple flights from outside the Schengen area.”
-Additional reports by Beren Carreno, Catalina Demony and Pol Conheil
