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Some have been stranded like four-wheeled castaways in the queues of the M-20 motorway, defecating under the truck and vainly asking the police for "food, food".

Others have managed to get to Manston airport, equipped overnight with a gigantic parking lot.

The lucky ones have managed to find a niche in the Ashford service area and allow themselves the luxury of occasionally eating at a fast food.

They are Spanish truck drivers, more than 3,000 according to the Spanish Confederation of Goods Transport (Cetm), who have been trapped in what

they call "the mousetrap" in the British Isles

, after the panic unleashed by the new strain of the coronavirus and the temporary "lock" of the Eurotunnel,

informs Raquel Villaécija

.

France has already announced that it is

reopening the British border but imposes a sanitary control.

"I do not know if the fault is the French or the British, the fact is that we are Europeans and they

have left us here like dogs,

" laments Juan Miguel Lucas Navarro, 30, who came with his truck. company, Vila y Fayos, with a shipment of vegetables and fruits from Caudete (Albacete).

Juan Miguel is parked with his truck on the M-20, about 13 kilometers from the Eurotunnel, in sporadic contact with a long dozen colleagues from his company who have also been trapped, waiting for the news that comes with a dropper: "I have I am lucky to have provisions for a week, but there are people who do not, and all the help we have is from a policeman who has occasionally been distributing bottles of water. Such a thing is unthinkable in Spain, at least I think so. The Cross would help us Red, or the people themselves. Here if you get off the shoulder, the cars are already whistling because you are annoying. The most you can do is eat a can of tuna in the cabin. "

"Here we are confined,"

emphasizes the driver from Albacete.

"They are abusing us, this is outrageous. They have put about four mobile toilets, but two hours later they were already flooded. Here there is no security against Covid or anything like that. People prefer to shit under trucks, and the The truth is that I do not know how long we can continue like this, and how long it will take to clear this, three days at least. And what awaits us with Brexit.

Spanish truckers stranded in a service area SANTIAGO POLO

Just over a kilometer from Juan Miguel, with the comforts of a service area, is Santiago Polo, 52, from the company Transportes Hermanos Corredor de Cieza (Murcia).

"I am one of the privileged," he

acknowledges.

"At least we can go out to stretch our legs and go to McDonald's to eat. But there are people who are having a very bad time: nobody was prepared for something like that."


Santiago had it all figured out.

She had just left her lettuce shipment in Peterborough (the city where Catalina de Aragón is buried) and had everything calculated to cross the English Channel on Sunday.

If all went according to plan, he would be back home by Christmas Eve.

"

I found the port closed and there was no way to catch a ferry

. I headed towards the Eurotunnel and the police made you turn around. We watched the news, we talked to each other and we already knew what awaited us: calm and patience ... Although I have never experienced anything like this, really. Once they made me wait 35 hours in the M-20 without water or food, and I have suffered several strikes, but this surpasses everything. We do not know how or when it will end, and that wanting to give us all a PCR is impractical. "

The shadow of Brexit

Santiago is what they believe that behind this there is something more than the strain of the Covid ... "There must be another reason. This is something closely related to the tug of war of the Brexit Agreement. How do you explain that it happens precisely at this time? There are too many coincidences, it seems to me. Although I want to send a message from here to our families and friends there in Spain: "We will come down, everything will be fixed."

From Murcia, Pascual Corredor, co-owner of the company, closely follows the situation of the nearly 40 drivers trapped in the "mousetrap".

"60% of the production goes to the United Kingdom," he recalls.

"Mainly lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower, destined for the large British supermarkets.

Demand this year has tripled

due to the Christmas season and due to the fear of supply problems after Brexit."

"The last three weeks have been an ordeal for our drivers, with technical stops of up to six or seven hours to be able to leave the United Kingdom," complains Pacual Corredor, who does not hesitate to also blame the European Union for what is happening. : "Until now we were essential and now it turns out that we are expendable ... This is difficult to explain. The population has to appreciate the fundamental role that carriers are playing during the pandemic."

From UNO, the logistics employer, they explain that there are around 30 kilometers of retentions and some 15,000 trucks stopped in various parts of southern England.

The Spanish Confederation of Goods Transport (Cetm) denounces for its part that

these professionals "have been trapped for two days

, poorly parked on hard shoulders and with no place to eat or rest."

Rod McKenzie, from the British National Association of Transporters, gave the alert on the BBC about the precarious situation of truckers: "They have already spent two nights waiting, many have already run out of food and the county of Kent He has limited himself to distributing cereal bars among them ... It seems to me that a very poor help for such a situation. "

Even the French roadmen launched it against their own president and displayed posters that read "Merde, Macron!"

in the entrance queues of the Eurotunnel.

"We refuse to be hostage to a political situation that goes beyond the health emergency

,

"

Henri Daubin, a French driver stationed at Manston airport, denounced a local station in Kent, the scene of something like the apocalypse of a thousand trucks. .

From Cetm a letter has been sent to the Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, to demand "immediate action by the Government so that drivers trapped in France and the United Kingdom can return home urgently."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that it is working with the British and French Governments to "facilitate the return of carriers affected by the restrictions on mobility in the English Channel."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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