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    Spain -latest info (copied) Archived Message

    Posted by Marion on 20/3/2020, 3:44 pm

    For UK citizens living in the south of Spain who try to leave, it’s not easy.

    Inside Malaga airport, the terminal is almost empty. Pretty much every check-in counter is closed. But at the British Airways desk, there is a queue of people, each standing a safe distance from the person in front.

    The flight is sold out. People in the airport tell us they have been asked to pay up €1,000 (£900; $1,070) for a one-way ticket to London. “I just want to get back to the UK,” one woman says.

    Philida Mary Jones, 86, has found a cheaper alternative on Ryanair to fly to Bristol. She’s turned up six hours early for her flight as she has had three earlier tickets cancelled.

    She lives in Spain for several months at a time and says she feels safe here, but her family in Wales are worried and want her home.

    In Benalmadena, a community of pretty villas stretching up a hillside with views over the sea, the streets are silent.

    Alison Thompson and her husband are not sure whether to leave. They have two dogs and would have to drive across Spain then take a ferry to reach the UK.

    The earliest date they can get a booking is exactly in a month’s time. But will the ferry journey expose them to people who might be infected? And would they escape one lockdown in Spain only to arrive in the UK in the middle of a new shutdown there?

    Hard choices with no easy answers.

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