my guest today is spain's foreign minister, arancha gonzalez.e come to terms with increasingly defined by american and chinese nationalism? foreign minister arancha gonzalez. welcome to hardtalk. great to be with you. let us start with the latest on the coronavirus pandemic in spain. is your country ready to declare that your national emergency is over? we will be ending state of alarm in spain on the 21st ofjune. but i do not think we can claim victory against covid—19 until we have a vaccine or a treatment, we have to remain vigilant. so, we will into the harsh measures we took to control covid—19 in spain, but we will keep everyone on the alert to make sure that we can open spaces for freedom, for free circulation, for people's contacts and we will keep covid—19 under control. with the spanish central bank predicting that your economy could contract between nine and 11% in 2020, would it be fair to say that your prime concern right now has perhaps switched from the public health crisis, which is easing, to a national economic crisis which is

spain's foreign minister, arancha gonzalez laya, told the bbc earlier today that spain was discussingt its quarantine measures, but explained spain took the unilateral decision out of "respect" to those with second homes in the country. we are discussing with the uk authorities to see if they would do the same on their side. we nevertheless are doing this out of respect for the 400,000 british citizens that have a second residence in spain and that are dying to benefit from their homes in our country. we want to make sure that we honour our commitment to treat british citizens who are, on an epidemiological basis, similar to other european union member states to continue to be able tojoin their homes in spain as from the 21st ofjune. joining me now is the bbc‘s guy hedgecoe in madrid. an interesting development there, that spain has now unilaterally decided to allow brits into spain without the two week quarantine. yes, that's right, and we've known for some days now that spain was going to take that measure for number of other countries, as you said, across europe. the big question w

arancha gonzalez laya said discussions were continuing with the uk government about exempting spanishuarantine rules here. she told my colleague geeta guru—murthy that her country's decision is partly out of respect for the hundreds of thousands of british citizens who have second homes in spain. what we have done is we've made a decision, we will allow british visitors to enter spain, just like the rest of the european union or schengen area, from the 21st ofjune, freely and without the need for quarantine. we will, nevertheless, continue to apply a triple check. passengers will be checked for their origin, checked for temperature and we will be asking everybody to register so that we know we have a contact point where to trace them in case they get contaged with coronavirus. we want to make sure that we welcome visitors, but we want to do this in safety and security for them as well as for the spaniards. and you are announcing this unilaterally? has there been a deal the other way? we are discussing with the uk authorities to see if they would do the same on their side. we neverthel

the spanish foreign minister, arancha gonzalez, had said a few days ago that she was very keen that thiss were lifted on both sides. now, when she announced that spain was lifting its own quarantine controls for the uk, she did say she hadn't reached an agreement with the british that it was a unilateral measure, but that she still hoped the british would lift their own controls. as far as we know, the uk doesn't have any plans to change its own controls for spaniards — it was going to review them anyway onjune 29th. that hasn't changed. i should point out the number of british people arriving over the coming days is probably likely to be quite low because people simply hadn't had time to book their holidays and change plans since the quarantine issue has been changed. this morning police are continuing to question 25—year—old khairi saadallah, a libyan national who lived in reading, over the stabbing attacks that took place on saturday. let's just recap on what we know. atjust before 7pm, police were notified of a knife attack in forbury gardens, near reading town centre. thames valley