VisaHQ says Spanish police issued confidential circular on EES exemption for Gibraltar residents

The private visa services company, VisaHQ, says a "confidential circular" was sent last week from Spain's National Police immigration unit to all border posts in respect of Gibraltar residents crossing into Spain.

GBC reported on Friday that Spanish authorities were asking Gibraltar residents without a Red ID card to submit to EES checks, which the Government put down to a "misunderstanding."

In answer to GBC questions, the Government said some anomalies detected on Friday appear to relate to misunderstood instructions through the Spanish chain of command.

Number Six confirmed that legal residents of Gibraltar, with all colours of residence cards, can access Schengen via Spain without EES unless they request to do so.

The private visa services company, VisaHQ, says a "confidential circular" dated 22nd April, was sent from Spain's National Police immigration unit to all border posts regarding Gibraltar residents, notably the land crossing at La Línea and airports handling Gibraltar traffic, to stop registering Gibraltar nationals in the EU’s new Entry/Exit System.

The EES has been fully operational since 10 April.

VisaHQ says by omitting Gibraltar residents, who technically remain UK nationals, Spain is bending an EU rule that has no written exemption for the territory. It says the police memo cites neither legal authority nor a time limit, but officials hint the measure is a “temporary workaround” until the long-negotiated EU–UK mobility agreement on Gibraltar takes effect on 15 July.

The website says it's Spanish portal continually monitors policy shifts to assist travellers with documentation requirements for Spain and the wider Schengen area.

Meanwhile, on Monday, GBC received reports of an outage in the EES system which saw a number of green ID card holders asked to pull aside and wait when going through the frontier.