The British Association of Sant Antoni, led by Martin Makepeace, has sent a formal letter to Consell d’Eivissa president Vicent Marí. In this letter they are warning about what it describes as a growing problem for legal residents from outside the EU, especially Britons.

The issue is fairly simple. When during the first scan at the airport a British passport is presented, the traveller is automatically directed into the non-EU queue. This is also the case if that person also holds a TIE card proving legal residency in Spain.

Due to this things start to slow down. Officers then carry out extra manual checks to make sure the passport is not stamped by mistake. This is because legal residents are not subject to the 90-day Schengen stay limit in the same way as tourists.

Many British residents get angry about what happens hereafter: long queues, repeated document checks and the odd feeling of being treated like a visitor in the place where they live.

Waits of more than an hour

Makepeace says the delays are no longer occasional. There have been cases of waits of more than an hour,” he told local newspaper Periódico de Ibiza y Formentera. “In Palma and Alicante they already have a system to avoid this problem, but here in Ibiza they haven´t. It cannot be that, as island residents, we have to wait as long as tourists arriving from outside the EU.

In the letter sent to the island council, the association says the situation is causing understandable concern among legal residents whose paperwork is fully up to date. And with the busiest months of the year just ahead, that concern is only likely to grow.

Other airports have already made changes

AENA, Spain’s airport operator, has already introduced systems at airports including Alicante and Palma to make transit easier for residents in this position. That is the point the association keeps coming back to. If it can be done elsewhere, why not in Ibiza?

It is now asking the Consell to step in and urge AENA to apply the same kind of solution at Ibiza Airport, so residents can move through passport control more quickly and with less confusion.

Ibiza is not the only airport affected

The problem has not been limited to Ibiza. Similar issues have been reported at Madrid-Barajas and Málaga. Furthermore, delays linked to the new EU Entry/Exit System, or EES, have also caused disruption elsewhere in Spain.

The EES is the automated system designed to record the entry and exit of non-EU nationals travelling into the Schengen area. In practice, though, the rollout has been anything but smooth.

The biggest delays seem to happen the first time a TIE holder goes through the system, when biometric data has to be registered. That extra step can create serious bottlenecks. In Barcelona, waits have reportedly stretched to more than three hours.

Pressure building before summer

This matters in Ibiza because British tourism remains the island’s biggest foreign market. Therefore, any hold-up at the airport is felt quickly. For residents, it is a daily frustration. For the island, it is also an image problem.

ETIAS and EES: what UK passport holders need to know for Spain — and why your TIE matters