• UK Truckers trapped in Dover: "We are the hostages of Brexit"

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At a degree above zero, stranded by the M-20 motorway and eating a hamburger and some Burger King fries in the solitude of his cabin.

This is how

Lázaro Emilio Pérez Gómez

, 50,

spent Christmas Eve

in

an ordeal shared by thousands of truckers

who continue to queue after five days to be able to cross the English Channel.


"This profession is hard and it is not the first time that I have to spend Christmas away from home", warns Lázaro.

"I hoped to arrive this time in time for Christmas Eve with my son and my mother.

I already feared the worst, but never anything like that

. This is ruin in every way. If this is the" normality "that awaits us, I don't know who will want to go back to England. "


Lázaro left his shipment from the Murcian garden (lettuce, broccoli and celery) in Hinckley on Sunday and headed for Dover fearing the worst: "They have used the new variant of the coronavirus as an excuse. They have used us as guinea pigs.

They have used us had been here to force the British to

sign the deal

, but now we still don't know when we can finally get out. "


The tens-of-kilometer metal snake began to move slowly on Friday and Lázaro took the opportunity to pull his truck out of

the service area, where he spent three nights in a row, to get in line

.

After 400 meters, again the stoppage and general frustration: "No one appears here to give us explanations, just some volunteers (wearing Santa hats) who bring us food."


Two drivers from the same company, Hermanos Corredor, managed to board at Dover on the same Thursday: "They were among the first in the queue and they were lucky. But we are almost fifty drivers who are trapped at different points. And

we are relatively lucky, the they charge per kilometer and per day

, imagine having been stopped since Sunday. "


At Dover 26

French firefighters

arrived precisely on Thursday

loaded with 10,000

lateral luxury

tests

, capable of giving the results in 20 minutes and essential to be able to enter France after the alert unleashed by the new, even more infectious strain.

For its part, the British Army has mobilized 800 soldiers to carry out the tests and has established its operations center at Manston airfield, where there are still

more than 2,000 truck stations waiting for their turn

.


"They say they have tested three positives," says Lázaro, who is well informed (of the first 2,367 tests, 2,364 were negative).

"I don't really know what this is for. This test will not detect it if you are incubating it and you take it away. And in the meantime they have us held here in the most dangerous place;

this is indeed a source of infection

."


The arrival of the

pompiers

in Dover served to appease the anger of the truckers, already resigned to spend Christmas on British soil, but eager to escape from the "mousetrap" before the weekend ...

Truck queue is not moving


"The novelty is that the tail does not move," certified

Santiago Polo

, doing pineapple with other Spanish truckers, also on the M-20, 24 miles from the Eurotunnel.

"This is going super slow: ahead there is a colleague who has advanced in just four miles in two days miles."


More optimistic at his side,

José García

scanned the horizon on a particularly cold and blue day: "If nothing happens, then

hopefully, in a couple of days we can catch the train

. You want to catch it and get to our house , Let's see if we are lucky".


"If you don't move, you're going to have to stay here until next year," was what they told Abdul Novo, who put him in line while Christmas Eve was still kicking.

"So I said to myself, I'm going to get going and get going so I don't have to spend the end of the year here. Let's see if we can go home soon and see the family."


To boost morale, the drivers passed from hand to hand a copy of the test carried out by a colleague that certifies the

résultat négatif

and allows them to freely enter French soil.

"It seems that they have set up a post at exit eight to speed up the procedures so that you can get to the tunnel with the test already done," certified Santiago Polo.


More than a thousand trucks traveled through the Eurotunnel on Wednesday and the number doubled on Thursday, hoping to end up unlocking the "plug" of more than 10,000 trucks in the southeastern tip of England.

Most are French drivers, followed by Poles and Spaniards

(possibly more than three thousand, from Murcia, Valencia and Almería).


The congestion was, however, more evident in the port of Dover, where truckers have staged noisy protests against the British and French authorities, with their vehicles idling in a nightmare scenario.

The situation at Manston airfield has also become worrying due to the lack of provisions and latrines for the more than two thousand truckers stationed since last Sunday.

The French ambassador to the UK, Caherine Colonna, asked her truckers for patience and understanding and reached out to British "neighbors, partners, allies and (yes) friends".

The spokesman for the British Road Transport Association, Duncan Buchanan, acknowledged that the situation will take days to resolve: "The most important thing is that drivers do not lack food and that they are protected against the low temperatures that we expect these days" .

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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