The British press has once again focused on Tenerife, this time due to the problems with passport control at Tenerife South airport, denouncing “inhuman” conditions.
The start of the British half-term should have been a celebration for the hotels in Tenerife, but it ended up becoming a passport ordeal when several flights from the United Kingdom coincided in the terminal, clogging the entry checkpoints and triggering scenes more typical of a concert than an international airport.
The half-term are holidays in the middle of each school term, generally lasting a week, which usually take place in the last week of October, mid-February, and the last week of May.
Only four agents
Airport sources acknowledge that only four national police officers were stamping passports when at least five planes full of British travelers coincided.
The collapse has worsened since 2021, the year when travelers from the United Kingdom, post-Brexit, became non-EU citizens and require more rigorous control.
Queues at Tenerife South / TikTok
Viral videos show families packed in a non-ventilated corridor. Some passengers were held on planes for 45 minutes and, once on the ground, faced a single line that snaked outside the building.
In this situation, there were parents lifting children above their heads to “prevent them from suffocating” and shouting for water, as witnesses told the tabloid The Sun.
The season at stake
The British newspaper reports that even the president of the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila, and the island’s Tourism Minister, Lope Afonso, demanded urgent reinforcements from the Ministry of the Interior and AENA: “Our main market cannot be received in third-world conditions; we are risking the high season.”
In a press conference on government council agreements, the island president regretted the situation with the example of the “collapse” generated on Monday night, May 26, when “more than 500 tourists remained trapped in a crowded room at the Airport” to pass passport control.
Dávila recalled the letter sent to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, expressing her “concern” about the “undervaluation” conditions that the National Police posts had in this passport control system, while the response from the national department referred to being “sufficiently staffed.”
More waiting
That’s not all. The European biometric registration system (Entry/Exit System) will begin its trials this fall and will require fingerprints and photos from each non-European, potentially multiplying wait times unless human and technological resources are reinforced.
Therefore, this situation, if not mitigated, could be just “a preview of what is to come.”
