Here’s a bit of information why the government’s latest advice may not have been properly thought through.
It is true that some parts of Spain have seen a spike in cases. There was a spike about five days ago that saw the daily number of new cases double from around 1,300 to 2,600 and that level seems to have been maintained. However, almost all these new infections in Spain are on the mainland and are mainly in two or three quite well defined areas. I can appreciate that a “regional” air bridge from mainland Spain is probably not appropriate, even though most people holidaying there tend to remain in one area.
However, looking at the Canary Islands (over 1,000 miles from Madrid, in the Atlantic Ocean, and farther from the Spanish Capital than Madrid is from London) the picture is quite different. Those islands are quite self contained and tourists visiting them from the UK are unlikely to visit mainland Spain in the same trip. Lanzarote, for instance, was declared Covid-free on 22nd June. They had suffered 91 cases and six deaths – the youngest of whom was 69. Since then they have seen six more new cases – one in a person who had recently arrived from Mexico and five more among those arriving on an immigrant boat from Africa. All six are in isolation. So what does this mean for "Brits Abroad"? People travelling from the UK leave a country where the seven day average of new cases currently runs at just shy of 700 and where the seven day average of the number of deaths is 65. They spend their holiday on an island where the disease is all but eradicated and where, at least at the moment, very small amounts of traffic from mainland Spain exist. But when they return home they have to have a fortnight off work (not to mention, of course, that few of them will have secured supplies to see them through two weeks upon their return and most of them are unlikely even to have a pint of long-life milk). Meanwhile people like me who dismiss such moves as utter knee-jerk nonsense devised by idiots are dismissed as murderers and granny killers. The move to include the Spanish Islands in the latest "advice" is utterly ridiculous.