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| - Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has hit back at Britain's move to quarantine all travellers returning home from Spain, saying parts of the country are safer than the UK. The Spanish leader defended the Balearic and Canary islands, Andalucia and the Valencia region -- favourite summer holiday destinations for Britons -- saying they had "a cumulative incidence of the virus that is lower than that currently in the United Kingdom". "That is to say, in epidemiological terms, it might even be safer at these destinations than in the United Kingdom," Sanchez told the private channel Telecinco in an interview late Monday. The spread of the infection in Spain was "uneven", he said, with two-thirds of new cases registered in just two regions -- Aragon and Catalonia, where the regional authorities have urged residents of metropolitan Barcelona and another city to stay at home. Madrid was in talks with London "to try to convince them to reconsider the measure, which in our opinion is unbalanced," he said. British tourists are the largest national group of visitors to Spain, with 18 million of them visiting the country last year. The quarantine decision is a major blow to Spain's tourist industry, which accounts for 12 percent of gross domestic product and 13 percent of employment. "We will continue working with the British authorities," Sanchez said, adding that "in a significant part of the country, the epidemic is well under control". Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya had on Sunday tried to allay fears after some countries reimposed travel restrictions on Spain. "Spain is a safe country," she told reporters. "Like other European countries, Spain has new outbreaks. It's not unusual." Madrid is making "great efforts to control these outbreaks", she said after nearly 1,000 new cases were reported on Thursday and Friday. The number of COVID-19 cases has tripled in two weeks, and the authorities are monitoring more than 360 outbreaks. Passengers from Spain arriving in the UK must now spend a fortnight in isolation, with Norway imposing similar conditions. On Friday, French Prime Minister Jean Castex "strongly recommended" that people avoid going to northeastern Spain, the worst-hit area. Spain has been badly hit by the pandemic, which has so far claimed more than 28,400 lives and infected more than 272,400 people, declaring a lockdown and state of emergency in mid-March which only lifted on June 21. avl/bc/avz/bp/spm
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