When everything else is not the same
… because it is rare for just one thing to be different
You may have missed (or forgotten) it during the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the end of January 2021 Britain finally left the EU, more than four years after this step was decided in a referendum. In the midst of the disruption (not least to travel) that characterized this period, the effects of this momentous event were minor. But this spring, as travel restrictions melted away like the winter frost, Britons were travelling to warmer climes again, and ran into an experience that was quite different from what they had been used to.
The peak holiday season is still to come, but even during this Easter break, travellers between the UK and Spain were already complaining about “2-hour long queues” at passport control (as they can no longer use the automatic gates), and about not being able to travel with a passport that is too old. And it was not only the travellers who were inconvenienced. British expatriates in Spain, who had been enjoying the equivalence of their British driving licence with the Spanish equivalent while the UK was in the EU, found that things had changed for them too. As the grace…
