Brexit Day

31st January 2020: Brexit Day

Brexit is a topic which comes up every time we meet people along our journey from the UK. A lot of the people we have met, and made friends with, are people who have been vanliving for quite some time – some all year round, others for six months of the year to escape the winter weather.  Everyone is conscious that things are going to change.  Travellers with UK passports will only be permitted to be in the EU for 90 days in every 180 and people are trying to figure how they can manage to live life as they enjoy it within the new system, however that will work out. Several are planning on buying land in Portugal this year and setting up residency.  Some plan to leave their vans at home and go backpacking ( this is people of retirement age ) in the hope of travelling under the radar. Some thinking of spending three months in Morocco before three months in Spain, and then back to UK. Several have been quizzing me on whether their great grandparents / in laws being Irish might be enough to get them an Irish passport!

But the people most concerned are those we spoke to in Gibraltar.  The turnout in the Brexit referendum in Gibraltar was 84% and only 4% voted to leave the EU. Nonetheless, leave they must, and people have, as yet, no information on how this is going to impact on their daily lives. But with the population on both sides, British and Spanish, crossing the border day and night, and goods too, suffice to say things will change radically for this area.