Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

And oh, it's such a joy to be in a very busy part of a great world city.

I'm kind of reminded of Barcelona, but that's not where I am. I'm actually in Carnaby Street in central London.

And if you don't know it, well, it's a fabulous place to come and shop.

Or indeed, if you are rather like me, and shopping isn't your biggest skill set, it's still a great place to see lots of people.

Anyway, the reason I mentioned Barcelona is because, thank goodness,

this afternoon news finally came around,

or just past the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs.

Sounds like my sort of ministry.

Spain has at last and very abruptly abandoned its COVID restrictions.

Spain has been a real outlier right through the COVID pandemic.

They had some quite challenging rules at various times.

In particular, you would find that if you're going to the Canary Islands,

you had to obey two sets of rules, and that might involve a separate test

which applied if you were staying in private accommodation but not in an

apartment. I mean it was very very confusing but the UK the earlier parts of the pandemic did some pretty

awful things as well to Spain July July the 10th, 2020.

Oh, what a day it was.

That was when finally, after some very questionable imposition of quarantine rules for about eight weeks,

the UK said, okay, it's fine, you can go to all these lovely countries.

Portugal wasn't among them, but Spain definitely was.

Two weeks later, I'm walking through Pisa when news comes through that Spain has been put on the

...