The current restrictions on the arrival of international travellers to Spain will last until October, at the earliest, according to Spanish Government forecasts. This week the Council of Ministers approved a calendar that looks set to maintain some of the strictest restrictions on mobility in Europe with the closure of borders until well into the autumn.

This calendar reflects a “guideline” schedule that ministers have warned is not “exhaustive”. “The decisions and specific dates on the effective lifting of any limitation established during the State of Alarm is to be determined through corresponding legal instruments,” explains a document, signed by the Ministry of Health.

The Executive have also clarified that these proposed timetables could need to be adjusted if developments are not favourable to the relaxation of restrictions saying that further “outbreaks of different severity… could lengthen the process.”

The Government has already been working since early April on a plan that contemplates a summer without foreign tourism, and with the borders shut. This is to be a two-way measure, both for incoming and outgoing travel. In other words, Spain has arrived at the position that for the duration of this summer period, nobody will be able leave the national territory, unless a specific health certificate recommends it.

The tourism sector in Spain has begun to assume arrivals for foreign visitors this summer will be impossible. Last Tuesday, Iberia’s proprietary holding company, IAG, said in a statement that it expects the crisis to last for years. And the SEPLA pilots’ union contemplate that flights will not recover pre-crisis levels until at least 2023.