Like @Doctor_Faustus, I’m curious what you see as the obvious win-win option. And as an EU resident, I’m curious what you see as the chosen “option that would do … the most possible harm.” The only visible impacts of Brexit for me personally have been that the local Marks & Spencer Food stores have closed after months of supply problems, having goods shipped from the UK has become prohibitively expensive, and travel to the UK has become unattractive. I’ve lost a bit of convenience (M&S Food is not really something I will long for) and a potential vacation destination – boo hoo. Few non-UK citizens I know have even noticed the impact of Brexit at all.
Granted, that is all anecdotal, but all the more reason to be interested in what you think was the “obvious win-win option” that was missed.
It is my understanding that Spain was a popular UK tourist destination, Brexit making that far harder for UK residents to travel to and spend money in means less money for the Spanish tourist industry.
I fully expect COVID has made that impact moot at present though.
Assuming Spain likes to be a tourist destination (not all places that are tourist destinations actually like it!) a policy that lets UK residents come spend money is generally more of a win for Spain, and it happens to be a win for some UK folks, but that would be more of a side effect of the player that holds all the cards happening to like something that turns out OK for the player that has a hand full of squat. If Spain doesn’t actually enjoy being a tourist destination (despite the money) then it would make a lot more sense to do it this way.
Somewhere around 20% of foreign tourists in Spain are from the UK and barriers to regular tourism are pretty minimal even post-Brexit. It remains to be seen how big the impact will be, but I don’t expect tourism in Spain to stop anytime soon.
Granted, the impact is more significant for certain niches like retirees and part-time residents.
Well, we stopped shipping our wine to the UK, due to shipping concerns, taxes, and marketing issues. But our local wine co-op made a multi-year deal to ship everything we members can make to the US, to be sold by Costco under their own Kirkland label as French Côtes du Rhône. So the loss of the UK and Russian markets hasn’t hurt us at all.
We’ve sold all our 2021 co-op blend back to the co-op for Costco, and are keeping our estate-bottled for local sale and our own consumption.
Shameless plug: the 2020 vintage was quite good, and is a real bargain, but the 2021 is even better. It’s shipping now, and should become available in the US stores over the summer. If you like nouveaus, it’s quite drinkable now, but it will be better after it ages a couple of years.
And it’s probably a bad idea for me to promote another winery, but I’m going to anyway: if you see any of the 2021 Châteauneuf-du-Pape wines at a reasonable price, grab a few bottles. They’re really that good!
Well if England had managed to beat Spain back in the 1500’s, 1600’s or 1700’s and/or Britain had in the intervening centuries, they wouldn’t have the problem now /s
A friend of mine lives in a small town south of Valencia.
Three parts, Spanish, British immigrants, German Immigrants.
Most immigrants live there as pensioners since 10years or so, some surge in the German community due to “Covid-WhyNotFromTheBeachIfRemoteAnyway” decisions.
He was irritated about the people totally ignoring their own status. He said they are standing in the supermarket in Spain, complaining about any “north african looking” person as “filthy immigrants”, in their mind being still on british soil (“We need to close the borders, Brexit is the way to go”) while actually standing in a foreign country dependent on EU agreements.
The EU is still the closest and cheapest sunny destination for UK travellers. Unless the EU make things really difficult, Brits aren’t going to stop going to Majorca or the Canary Islands fro their beach breaks.
As we all know: travel doesn’t actually broaden the mind. Unfortunately.
Definitely parts of Spain are done with that, thank you very much. For example the slogan “refugees welcome, tourists go home” comes from Barcelona I believe. I use it for my home town. I also remember being in las Palmas in Gran Canaria and the place was covered in anti-tourist graffiti. People were genuinely suspicious of us as tourists. We spoke Spanish to them and they warmed immediately (also having two little girls saying “gracias” at the shop/cafe is guaranteed to have the abuela come around the counter to give sweets or presents to them!), but in general, they are done too. I don’t really want tourists in Dublin, not you people here, you would all be great no doubt, but the great mass of tourism makes living in the city unaffordable for the local population. Or at least that section of it that doesn’t work for tech companies or international finance. Refugees and immigrants contribute to the local economy without draining resources funnily enough. Tourists are the opposite when they reach a tipping point in a city. Lots of European cities would be quite glad to halve or third their number of tourists.
That is actually a fair point. Gibraltar does rather try to have it both ways at times, so perhaps they are a better model for what UKIPers have really been trying to achieve all these years - somewhere that ‘feels’ like the urEngland but which clearly is actually nothing like that.
