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Portugal and Spain debate new border closure

The President of the Republic said today that he hopes that TAP, like other operators, will be able to overcome the difficulties caused by the covid-19 pandemic to fulfill a mission for national tourism and Porto tourism.

“I hope that this phase will be overcome because it is very much needed, it is very much needed by this operator, or by other air operators, to fulfill a mission for Portuguese tourism and for Porto tourism”, said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa when asked by journalists about TAP’s recovery plan.

The head of state, who was speaking on the sidelines of a visit to Porto, said that the national flag company “was badly hit” by the pandemic and the crisis it caused, an example of which was the movement in national airports.

“It is evident that when there is an epidemic of this nature and a crisis of this scope, the national air operator par excellence was hit, it was hit hard, just look at the panorama of the airports, starting at Humberto Delgado airport [Lisboa], and see the planes stopped by the dozens ”.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stressed that “this coincided with a process, that he himself was a slow process, a restructuring process that is ongoing and that has a price, that price is global and then there are specific prices”.

On Monday, Jornal de Notícias reported that Porto “is again out of TAP’s recovery plans”.

In a clarification sent the same day to Lusa, the carrier underlined that “it has not yet announced the total of its operation for summer 2021” and that “it permanently monitors the dynamic evolution of the pandemic and its operational impacts and the list of routes and flights available in the reservation system will be adjusted whenever circumstances require it ”.

At the time, the company stated that, for “the period between October 2020 and March 2021, it announced only two new routes”, being “one departing from Lisbon and the other from Porto (Lisbon-Maceió and Porto-Sal)”.

The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed at least 929,391 deaths and more than 29.3 million cases of infection in 196 countries and territories, according to a report made by the French agency AFP.

In Portugal, 1,875 people died from 65,021 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.

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