Just 5,000 Spain travellers a day as country lifts all restrictions for British holidaymakers

Passenger numbers about one-10th of normal figures

First sight: Alicante, destination of the earliest departures from Manchester and Stansted (Simon Calder)

Claims of a surge in passenger numbers to Spain after restrictions were lifted appear premature.

Newspapers have claimed variously that 80 flights from the UK to Spain will depart on 24 May, and that 100,000 British holidaymakers are set to travel to Spain this week.

But The Independent calculates that fewer than 40 flights will depart for Spain on Monday, primarily from Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted and Heathrow.

They will carry up to 5,000 passengers, and a similar figure is likely to continue daily until Friday.

In a normal year, an average of almost 50,000 people per day travel from the UK to Spain. It is by far the favourite foreign destination of British holidaymakers.

Numbers are expected to increase at the weekend, which marks the start of the late May half term in England and Wales.

The first flight out was a Ryanair departure from Manchester to Alicante at 6.28am, followed 14 minutes later by a flight from Stansted to the same Spanish airport.

On Friday the Spanish prime minister announced that the ban on non-essential trips to Spain by British travellers would be lifted.

No testing or proof of vaccination status is required by visitors from the UK.

But Spain remains on the “amber list”, requiring 10 days of self-isolation and multiple tests on return to the UK.

The only significant European summer-sun destination on the quarantine-free “green list” is Portugal.

Government ministers have repeated their call for only essential travel to amber list destinations.

A poll for Good Morning Britain showed 67 per cent of respondents in favour of a ban on travel to Spain.