It Probably Should

Category: Spain – España 🇪🇸 (Page 1 of 3)

Spain, Morocco to open land border crossing next week after being closed for more than 2 years due to COVID-19 restrictions

Ashifa Kassam, Associated Press »

The land borders between Morocco and Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla will reopen next week, Spain said Thursday, after being closed for more than two years due to COVID-19 restrictions and tensions between the two countries.

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told reporters the reopening will start gradually from May 17. Crossings will be initially limited to residents of Europe’s passport-free Schengen area and their family members, and will be expanded to cross-border workers by the end of the month.

Elsewhere » La Prensa Latina

Ursula Martin has spent the last two years walking solo from Ukraine to the most westerly point of Spain. And her journey’s not finished.

Jazz Nobel writing in Outdoors Magic »

Ursula Martin defines herself as an ‘extreme rambler’. And that she certainly is. Between 2014 and 2015, she walked 3,700 miles in and around her homeland of Wales, all whilst undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Along the way she raised over £12,000 for cancer charities and helped to draw attention to the symptoms of ovarian cancer to thousands of people.

A few years later, Ursula embarked on another trek, hitchhiking from Wales to Eastern Europe to begin a solo walk across the bulk of the continent. Starting in Ukraine, she travelled through the Balkans and into Southern Europe, steadily making her way towards the Atlantic Ocean. All was going well enough until the beginning of 2020, when a roadblock arrived in the form of a global pandemic.

Top 30 countries ranked for adventure (2021)

The US News and World Report has again ranked countries according to how well they break from the norm and fulfill people’s wanderlust and desire for adventure.

The top 30 adventure rankings for 2021 are »

Continue reading

Changing conditions for visa-free travel to EU for non-EU nationals from December 2022

From December 2022, non-European Union nationals who do not require a visa to enter the Schengen area, will need to request prior authorisation to visit Schengen countries.

You will be able to apply online for authorisation via the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS).

The ETIAS authorisation is not a visa. Nationals of visa liberalisation countries will continue to travel the EU without a visa but will simply be required to obtain a travel authorisation via ETIAS prior to their travel. ETIAS will be a simple, fast and visitor-friendly system, which will, in more than 95% of cases, result in a positive answer within a few minutes.

An ETIAS travel authorisation does not reintroduce visa-like obligations. There is no need to go to a consulate to make an application, no biometric data is collected and significantly less information is gathered than during a visa application procedure. Whereas, as a general rule, a Schengen visa procedure can take up to 15 days, and can in some cases be extended up to 30 or 60 days, the online ETIAS application only takes a few minutes to fill in. The validity will be for a period of three years, significantly longer than the validity of a Schengen visa. An ETIAS authorisation will be valid for an unlimited number of entries.

The ETIAS travel authorisation will be a necessary and small procedural step for all visa-exempt travellers which will allow them to avoid bureaucracy and delays when presenting themselves at the borders. ETIAS will fully respect this visa-free status; facilitate the crossing of the Schengen external border; and allow visa free visitors to fully enjoy their status.

The exact date on which these changes will come into force is not yet clear.

More »

Alastair Humphreys tells us how he chooses his adventures

Alastair Humphreys »

How do you choose your next adventure when there are so many options available?

Wizarding up ideas for adventures is one of my favourite things to do. I find it enjoyable, exciting, but also easy. If I was a specialist I would need to search for something higher, harder and faster within my niche every time I wanted a new challenge. But because I am a generalist, I make the next adventure more challenging by making it differently challenging to previous projects. It is an important part of keeping adventure fresh for me.

I am surprised how often people tell me that they really want to do an adventure but don’t know what to do. Hopefully this walk-through of the way I come up with ideas might get your own adventure cogs whirring…

  • Cycling round the world
  • The Marathon des Sables
  • The South Pole
  • The Arctic Ocean
  • Iceland
  • Rowing the Atlantic

Switzerland remains the best country in the world » Canada has moved up to the second spot » U.S. News 2020 Best Countries rankings

For Switzerland, the 2020 ranking is the the fourth consecutive yearhas been judged No. 1 by residents of 36 countries. Canada was chosen second, overtaking Japan in the U.S. News’ fifth annual survey.

The Best Countries report, produced from an annual global survey of more than 20,000 people in 36 countries including the United States, reflects increasingly negative views of the world and within countries. Nearly half of survey respondents say conditions around the world have worsened in the past year. Likewise, an increased percentage of people say the gap between the rich and poor has grown and that nationalism is increasing.

According to the ranking, here are the Top 25 Countries in the World

  1. Switzerland
  2. Canada
  3. Japan
  4. Germany
  5. Australia
  6. United Kingdom
  7. United States
  8. Sweden
  9. Netherlands
  10. Norway
  11. New Zealand
  12. France
  13. Denmark
  14. Finland
  15. China
  16. Singapore
  17. Italy
  18. Austria
  19. Spain
  20. South Korea
  21. Luxembourg
  22. United Arab Emirates
  23. Russia
  24. Portugal
  25. India

The Bottom 5 of the U.S. News 2020 Best Countries rankings are

  • Lebanon
  • Serbia
  • Oman
  • Belarus
  • Tunisia

See the full report.

 

 

Arthur C. Brooks walked across Spain. Here’s what he found.

Arthur C. Brooks, writing in the Washington Post »

But the pilgrims still come, in larger and larger numbers. If not explicitly the divine, what are they seeking? There are definite worldly benefits to pilgrimage. Almost everyone loses weight, for example (although not like I did — starting my Camino on the heels of a bout of stomach flu and thus in a radically fasted state, I lost 10 pounds in a week). Some treat it like a physical-endurance challenge, such as the shredded and tanned couple we met in Santiago de Compostela who had completed the entire 500-mile walk, starting in France, in just 24 days.

Some seek relief from emotional torment, and there is evidence they can find it: A study published in the journal Psychological Medicine reported that those who went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, (another major Catholic pilgrimage destination) experienced a significant decrease in anxiety and depression, sustained for at least 10 months after the pilgrims had returned.

« Older posts