El Mundo: "Sailors Taking Sailboats from Balearic Islands to Croatia"

As Morski writes on the 24th of May, 2020, the wildly popular Balearic islands which belong to Spain are losing foreign guests rapidly in terms of nautical tourism due to the ongoing coronavirus epidemic and Spain's unfavourable epidemiological picture. Instead, those nautical tourists are sailing here to Croatia, where there are no strict measures to control the infection in place anymore, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo writes.

In an article entitled "Croatia is fishing in the waters of the Balearic islands", El Mundo points out that some multinational companies are moving their fleets to the Croatian coast, which is also a popular nautical destination, reports HRT.

For years, the beautiful Spanish archipelago in the Mediterranean has arguably been the centre of nautical tourism with a remarkable growth in the number of sailboats. Foreigners enjoyed sailing around the islands of Mallorca, Ibiza, Menorca, Formentera and Cabrera, which saw the injection of tens of millions of euros into the economy of these Spanish islands each and every summer. More than 350 companies focused on the Central European market are registered there.

However, despite secure and lucrative summers past, El Mundo notes that companies that rent out medium-sized sailboats, rather than large yachts, are worried about the frequent customer calls they have been receiving over recent days.

''They are calling on us to cancel or postpone their reservations until next year. The damage has been brutal. We're completely paralysed,'' said María Jimenez, a spokesperson for companies that rent sailboats.

Since the state of emergency was declared in Spain back on March the 14th, 2020, navigation, travel between the provinces and the arrival of foreign tourists have been banned on the Balearic islands. People who come from abroad, and currently that is only Spanish students or workers, must be in self-isolation for fourteen days upon arrival.

Due to that, a new phenomenon has emerged, that tourists who once frequented Spain's Balearic islands are switching over to the ''main competitor, Croatia", as reported by El Mundo.

Some multinational companies are moving sailboats east, to here on the Croatian coast, and they have stated in their advertisements that "there is no fourteen-day quarantine in Croatia".

Deputy Prime Minister Teresa Ribero told the Spanish news agency EFE on Thursday that foreign tourists could start arriving in July when the country's health situation is likely to become more favourable. Spain, along with the United Kingdom and Italy, is among the most affected European countries with 235,000 cases and 28,630 deaths from the new coronavirus.

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