Spain weekly update on entry requirements from third countries [14–20 February 2022]

A new list of risk and high risk countries has been published by the Ministry of Health of Spain.

From February 14th, 2022, at 00:00 hours, all third countries will be considered at risk except for China (including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), Indonesia, New Zealand, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea.

In the European Union and the European Economic Area, the countries at risk are Austria, Italy, Belgium, Latvia, Bulgaria, Liechtenstein, Croatia, Lithuania, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Malta, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Poland, Finland, Portugal, France, Romania, Germany, Slovakia, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary, Sweden, Iceland, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

Both of these lists will be reviewed in 7 days and modified according to each country’s sanitary situation and the EU Council’s recommendations.

The biggest change on COVID-related restrictions is not on these lists this week, though. According to the Ministry of Health of Spain, from February 14th, 2022, travelers from third countries with a valid vaccination certificate can enter Spain after verification by the health authorities.

Furthermore, non-fully vaccinated children between 12 and 18 years old will be able to present a nucleic acid amplification test (such as the PCR test) with negative results as long as it’s taken at least 72 hours before arrival in Spain.

As always, vaccination certificates must prove a complete vaccination schedule with vaccines approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Contrarily to other countries in the European Union, Spain does not consider a vaccination schedule complete until the travelers have received the booster shot of an approved vaccine. In this case, the vaccination certificate is valid from the day in which the traveler gets triple vaccinated, eliminating any previous restriction caused by non-approved vaccines in the schedule.

There are also no regulations on the obligatory nature of the EU Covid Digital Certificate right now, so the Spanish authorities will be receiving alternative documents —for public health reasons— from travelers from the member states of the European Union and the European Economic Area. These alternative documents include different COVID-19 diagnostic tests, recovery certificates, and local vaccination certificates.

But in the case of third countries, only vaccination certificates (with three doses) will be accepted. Otherwise, travelers can be denied entry into Spain.

According to British media, these restrictions are making British citizens skip Spain as a tourist destination, especially after the United Kingdom removed almost all travel restrictions for vaccinated travelers and facilitated international travel for non-vaccinated people.

This happens just three weeks after the Spanish authorities announced that they wanted to change the COVID-19 disease status from pandemic to endemic in their country. This is because the Omicron variant is not as dangerous as other previous variants in terms of severe illness and death, in spite of being more contagious and causing a high rate of infections in Spain and other countries in the world.