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First came the honking of protest,
then the shouts of outraged truckers ("Open the border!")
And finally the clashes with the police, which led to more than one arrested, although the tension dropped with the passing of the hours.
Thus began the lifting of the lock on the English Channel,
with the first ferries leaving the port of Dover and the first trains circulating through the Eurotunnel.
All together, the French truckers took the initiative, although they soon crashed into the harsh reality.
"
We have been told that this chaos can last until the weekend
", confessed Émile Roux, who came from Toulouse with a shipment of mattresses and still cherished the dream of returning home for Christmas after the reopening of the border.
"They say they are going to give us rapid tests for the coronavirus, that soldiers will come from the Manston base and that we will have the results in 20 minutes," the French trucker warned.
"But that was this morning,
when the spirits were tense, and here nobody comes and the line does not advance
."
Greg Mazurek and Simon Kopanearz, two Polish truck drivers who brought Covid medical supplies to the United Kingdom, also crashed their frustration and helplessness in the long line of more than five kilometers at the foot of the white cliffs of Dover: "We have come to to help and that's how they pay us. We don't know if this is the fault of the British government or the French government,
but anyone would say that they have chosen the truckers as hostages of Brexit
. "
In Dover, the ghost town of confinement, crowned by the specter of the old castle, the nerves are also on the surface.
"If this is a rehearsal of what awaits us in the coming months,
we are all going to have to raise the curtain,
" lamented Eddie Stewart, who works at Europa Fish & Chips, closed until further notice.
"When I came here 20 years ago,
tourists came to see the castle and the cliffs
and Kent was known as the garden county," Stewart recalls.
"Now you see: we have become the parking lot county. The city is becoming insufferable."
Meanwhile, more than 3,000 Spanish truckers are still trapped in the mousetrap in southern England, waiting for news about how and when they can undergo the coronavirus test, the condition set by the French authorities to enter the country, out
of fear unleashed before the new strain.
According to the BBC, the British military will reinforce the personnel of the National Health Service (NHS), with a headquarters at Manston airport and with a system to be able to do on-site tests to carriers and to have the results in half an hour.
Despite the poor reliability of
the so-called "lateral flow tests"
(to detect the presence of coronavirus antibodies in the blood), the authorities have agreed that it is the only feasible method in this emergency situation.
The British Government has already experimented with this system of mass population testing during a pilot program in Liverpool.
"That's what they have told us around here, that they are going to do quick tests, but we are waiting," acknowledged Santiago Polo, stationed since Sunday in an Ashford service area.
About forty drivers from the Hermanos Corredor company have been stranded on British soil after delivering their shipment of vegetables and fruits from Murcia.
The truckers are already resigned to spending Christmas Eve in England or at least in France, and to be able to reach Spain before the weekend.
The snake made up of thousands of trucks
, occupying two lanes of the M-20 motorway, gave the first signs of movement, but the general feeling is that the situation will take days to normalize,
with the rope at the end of the Brexit transition period
( and the deployment of 50,000 customs agents) around the corner.
"The border has been reopened with priority for those who are traveling for urgent reasons and as long as they show a Covid test with negative results," said Secretary of Transportation Grant Shapps.
"We ask the carriers not to line up for the moment towards the ports and the Eurotunnel in the hope of boarding the first ferries and the first trains."
The French Minister of Transport, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, confirmed for his part the restoration of the Eurostar passenger service.
"
French citizens and those who have a legitimate reason to leave the UK
have been the first to board, provided they have a negative test," Djebbari warned.
The emergency situation created by the European bolt has served in some way as a preview of what awaits the United Kingdom from 1 January.
Manston airport had to be fitted out on the fly as a gigantic parking lot, with 2,180 trucks waiting for their turn and with hardly any latrines or minimal services.
British supermarkets have meanwhile given the alert for possible shortages of supply during the Christmas season, as a result of the temporary blockade of the transport of goods in the English Channel.
The German company Lufthansa
confirmed the urgent shipment of 80 tons of fruit and vegetables
to Sheffield, due to the demand of British wholesalers, in need of alternatives.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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