Brits head home to avoid being deported as illegals in Spain
Here&#x27;s the text of a paywalled article from the times with better example info of how people get in this situation: not having health insurance for instance.<p><i>Your 90 days are up, Europe tells holiday home Britons<p>Charlie Devereux, Malaga | Tom Kington, Rome | Charles Bremner, Paris - Saturday March 27 2021, 12.01am GMT<p>John Price and Elaine Wilson may have to abandon their home in Spain after their post-Brexit residency application was rejected.<p>The couple were told that their claim failed because they had not bought private medical insurance before the end of last year, when the transition phase of Brexit ended.<p>Wilson, 53, a former paramedic, was waiting for the all-clear on breast cancer before buying insurance and the couple had been advised that they had until March 31.<p>Lawyers have told them that their appeal will probably fail. They are checking a Spanish government website daily to see if their appeal has been recorded. So far it has not, and they do not know if they will wake up on April 1 as illegal aliens.<p>“We’re on tenterhooks,” Price, 51, said. “We don’t know if we face fines, a bad stamp in our passports and being banned from entering the Schengen area. A rock and a hard place springs to mind.”<p>Britons across Europe are slipping into a post-Brexit limbo as red tape confounds their efforts to establish residency under new rules.<p>In Italy Britons who have residency are being refused jobs, healthcare, bank accounts and car purchases despite those rights and services being guaranteed under the EU Withdrawal Agreement.<p>In France like Price and Wilson in Spain, those living in their holiday homes since January 1 must leave the country by Thursday or face possible deportation and a ban on re-entering the country. April 1 marks the 90-day maximum that UK citizens are allowed to stay in any EU state within a six-month period without residence papers or a visa.<p>Before Wilson’s illness the couple spent their time shuttling between Spain and Shropshire, were they manage properties and a bed and breakfast business. But she says the cancer both made up her mind that she wanted to settle in Spain but also to delay the permanent move to Spain in order to complete her treatment in the UK for the sake of continuity.<p>In Spain thousands of Britons have rushed to legalise their status. Confusion and misinformation about the rules, which are interpreted differently in each region, has left many fearing that they will be ejected from a place they consider home.<p>Spain’s byzantine bureaucracy has spawned a parallel business of administrators or gestores to help foreigners to interpret the requirements. When Jeff Lunn and his wife, Deborah, applied for residency in August using a gestor recommended by friends they expected few problems. Seven months later they are h awaiting an appeal decision after their initial application was rejected.<p>The gestor had failed to include the terms and conditions for their medical insurance and the error has left them in limbo. They sold their home in Yorkshire and moved to a three-bedroom villa in Murcia.<p>The Lunns, who voted leave in the EU referendum, have had to hand in their British driving licences but will not get Spanish ones unless their residency is approved. They say they “have invested a lot of money here in Spain”.<p>Liza Hartley got her residency in December but her daughter, Anya, 12, did not. Hartley moved to Marbella to give Anya a bilingual education. She has been told her daughter’s application failed because of suspicions that she could have been kidnapped by her mother. The authorities need Hartley’s partner, Jimmy, who runs a construction business in Lancashire, to come to Spain and sign papers saying he gives consent. He cannot make it before the March 31 deadline because of Covid restrictions.<p>Thousands more face becoming illegal aliens in Spain on Thursday. Many have been living under the radar to avoid paying taxes, Anne Hernández, the president of Brexpats, which advises Britons in Spain on how to navigate the bureaucracy Brexit has created, said.<p>“Now it’s suddenly, ‘Oh, what am I going to do? I may become an illegal immigrant,’ ” she said. “The scariest thing is they think they’re going to do them for taxes. It’s come back to bite them.”<p>Others have simply been stumped by the bureaucracy. Spain chose the simpler form of withdrawal agreement, the declaratory system, which in theory reduced the bureaucratic load compared with other EU countries. But paperwork that is needed includes a copy of every page of a passport, a work contract, private health insurance and title deeds or a rental contract.<p>Britons also have to sit a driving test in Spanish if they did not swap their licence last year. That has been compounded by inconsistencies in the interpretation of the rules. “We have 17 autonomous regions in Spain and each one can interpret the rules differently,” Hernández said. “When you’re dealing with British who might not speak the language, they might be elderly, they get very confused and walk away totally upset thinking, ‘that’s it I’ve got to leave Spain’.<p>Steven Jolly, 65, a retired teacher from Yorkshire who owns a home in Normandy, said other Britons were returning to the UK. “Some are in their seventies and find it too much. Things like having to get health insurance with pre-existing conditions.”<p>Jeremy Morgan, a former QC who retired to Umbria and campaigns for Britons in Italy, said Italian officials were unaware that residents’ rights were protected under the Withdrawal Agreement. “We are often treated like third country migrants from outside the EU,” he said.</i>