Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Business

Spain Lines Up Brexit Backup Plan to Keep Tourist Planes Flying

  • British tourists are a key plank of Spain’s growing economy
  • Toledo wants the U.K. to engage with Spain over Gibraltar
Apartment blocks stand behind a beach packed with holidaymakers in Benidorm.

Apartment blocks stand behind a beach packed with holidaymakers in Benidorm.

Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg

Spain will have a backup plan in place to shield its tourism industry from any disruption to air travel caused by Brexit regardless of the outcome of talks between the U.K. and the European Union, Deputy Minister for European Affairs Jorge Toledo said.

Airlines tend to make their flight plans one year advance, so Spain still has about four months to see if a back-up plan will be necessary, with the U.K. planning to leave in March 2019, Toledo said in an interview Thursday in Madrid. If the plan the EU is working on doesn’t come through, Spain will have one of its own so that U.K. tourists can keep coming, he said.