After yesterday the Council of Ministers approved an Agreement amending the decision of March 10 establishing exceptional measures to limit the spread and contagion by COVID-19, the ban on flights of aircraft that exclusively transport Spanish citizens from Italy to our country.
This circumstance will facilitate the assistance that the Embassy as well as the Consulates General in Rome, Milan, Naples and Genoa will be able to provide to the more than 500 Spanish tourists who have visited the usual channels (telephone, website and social networks) to show their interest in being assisted on their return to their habitual residence.
At the same time, the ferry that departed yesterday from the port of Civitavecchia and which is traveling more than 200 Spanish citizens who were assisted by the Spanish Consulate in Rome is expected to arrive in Barcelona today. To them, we must add the group that has started the trip from Milan to Barcelona by bus after that connection had been organized by our Consulate in Milan.
It must be remembered that, in the first moments of the crisis unleashed by COVID-19, the Spanish Embassy and Consulates in Italy came to serve 5,500 people in just a few hours and, for the most part, they have already been more than ten days complying with the confinement measures.
From Germany there was also an intense movement of flights to Spain yesterday, accounting for a total of 14 and that, in some cases, they were transporting passengers from stopovers such as a group of children from Canada who traveled unaccompanied. The Consulate General in Amsterdam also received yesterday two minors from Canada and who proceeded to accompany them on their flights to Spain. During the past weekend alone, this Consulate accompanied 20 other Spanish minors, in this case, from Dublin.
The list of Spanish travelers who were in Europe and who have been able to return in the last few hours thanks to the intense efforts of our network of Embassies and Consulates for Europe, is completed with a flight that arrived today at Alicante from Vilnius with 39 Spanish from from Indonesia along with 31 who were touring in Lithuania; as well as eight Spanish tourists and 14 Ukrainian legal residents in Spain and relatives of Spaniards, who were assisted by the Spanish consular services in Ukraine and who have been able to travel from Kiev to Barcelona.
The situation in Africa and the Middle East has evolved very positively after the arrival, this past dawn, of 200 Spaniards from Senegal and Guinea Bissau; five tourists staying Jordan, a tourist from Iran; and the last two tourists, respectively, of which the Spanish Embassies in Oman (1) and Israel (1) were aware.
In Ibero-America and the Caribbean, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation continues to make efforts at all levels and through multiple channels to procure the return of Spanish tourists in all the countries in which they are located. These efforts result in the confirmation of special commercial flights from Peru and the Dominican Republic that will leave today with a total of approximately 400 passengers to which we would have to add, throughout this week more flights pending confirmation from other points in South America. .
Finally, the situation in Asia and the Pacific continues to progress after the Consulate in Jakarta managed to get the 39 Spaniards – mentioned above – to board the Lithuanian plane that arrived in Alicante today after calling at Vilnius. In the Philippines, solutions are being worked on for the 490 people who will be presenting throughout the week. In India today, 10 people have left for Spain via Bulgaria, while the Embassy continues to look for alternatives for the other 290 Spaniards in this country, despite the difficulties caused by dispersion throughout the country and the restrictions on movement decreed. by local authorities. 12 will return from Vietnam today, while 15 have decided to stay in the country; and today the two Spanish tourists are scheduled to leave the Cook Islands who will travel from Auckland to Los Angeles, London to Madrid.
Despite the difficult international situation and the severe travel restrictions imposed by all the countries of the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the network of 215 Embassies and Consulates continue to work intensively with more than 4,500 professionals deployed worldwide that assist all Spanish travelers trying to return to Spain and those who are permanently informed through the telephones of the representations abroad, the website and social networks as well as on the phone of the Emergency Unit where they respond to their calls 24 hours a day a total of 140 people on +34 913 948 900.
