Returning Home: Flying to Barcelona During Lockdown

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Spanish police are at the door of the plane. They are checking passports. Please have them open to the photo page.”

We have just arrived in Barcelona but I don’t have a Spanish passport. And I am traveling when most of the world is in lockdown. My original flight back to Spain was cancelled and I paid double to get a flight on the only airline that would bring me here. At the check-in counter in Melbourne, Alana from Qatar Airways took my documentation. She looked over it.

“Do you have an exemption?”

“No, I don’t need one. I have...”

“You need an exemption to leave the country.”

“But we checked.” I pull out my phone and search for the Australian government website. It is very familiar to me as my partner and I have been checking it every day. I find the banner heading Do Not Travel and scroll down. Meanwhile, Alana is on the phone to customs. They put her on hold.

I hadn’t planned to travel during lockdown. I originally bought my ticket back to Spain when things were still normal, and the virus was just a far-off problem in China. But if I don’t get back soon my residency will expire. I have no choice but to try to return. 

Alana is still on hold. I find the page I want. 

“It says that you can travel if you have residency in another country,” I say.

She shakes her head. “You have an Australian passport. That means you need to apply to leave.”

Don’t argue. Just do what she says. 

“I’ll do it now. I’ll apply right away.”

“It’s too late now. You have to do it 48 hours before you leave.”

A week before I left, I rang the Spanish consulate in Canberra. I asked if I will be allowed to return to Spain.

“Do you have the residency?”

“Yes, I have the green card. I have the NIE.”

“Can you please check that it says you have residency, because the NIE is just a número de identificación extranjero. It doesn't mean you have the residency.”

I fish in my bag for my wallet and pull out the little green piece of paper with my NIE on it. I remember going and getting it renewed a few days before I left Spain in January, booking an appointment at the Oficina de Extranjeros and waiting in a queue. 

“It says Residente Comunitario en España.”

“Yes, ok, you have the residency.”

“Is it permanent residency that I have?”

“You should know the answer to that question.”

“Well I'm just checking. I want to be completely sure.”

There is a pause and then she says “Yes, your card is for permanent residency.”

“Does it mean I can go back to Spain?”

Another pause.

“Yes, theoretically. It will depend on the customs officials at Barcelona airport. It’s up to them. There is a chance that they turn the plane around and send you back.”

When I talk to my partner he agrees that this is possible. 

Now, at Barcelona airport I rise from my seat. The bursar has asked us to observe social distancing but everyone is packed together too tightly in the narrow aisle. There is the usual crush as we all try to get up and get our bags. I think of my backpack that I forgot on the plane at Doha. By the time I remembered we were boarding the next plane and it was too late to go back. I mentally run through what was in it, to see if there is anything vital there. Toiletries, a jumper, a water bottle. My SIM card for my Spanish phone. If I get stuck I won’t be able to call my partner. I’ll have to rely on my Spanish, rusty after three months away. The line of passengers starts to move forward.

In Melbourne, Alana looked at my passport as she spoke on the phone.

“Papa alpha,” she says, reading out the first two letters of my passport number. She listens and then hangs up. 

“I can’t let you on the plane. You have to talk to customs.” 

“Where do I find them?”

“They usually come through about 8:00. You will have to wait for them.”

It is 7:00 now.

“How will I know who they are?”

“They wear dark uniforms. Just wait for them to come through.”

I take a seat near the counter and wait. A man in a dark uniform passes and I run up to him, leaving my bags by the seat.

“Are you customs?” I ask eagerly.

He looks a little stunned.

“No,” he says. “No, definitely not.” 

He walks off into the deserted airport.

In the days before I bought my ticket I had had second thoughts.

“Do you think I’m being selfish?” I say to my mother. “We aren’t supposed to travel now. Maybe I should just stay put.”

“Spain is your home now,” she says. “You were only supposed to be here for a couple of months. You need to get back.” She offers to pay for my ticket even though it is double the usual price.

At Melbourne airport two officers in dark uniform are strapping on blue plastic gloves. 

“Are you customs?”

The taller one, a blonde woman, looks at me sideways. Her eyebrows are raised above her mask.

“Well, yes,” she says. “We are border force. There is no such thing as customs anymore.”

“I need to get an exemption to get on the flight. I have a residency card for Spain.”

She takes my passport and makes a call. I hear her read out the number.

“Papa alpha,” she says.

She is on hold. She swings around to look at me.

“You live in Spain?” She asks. 

“Yes.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Barcelona.”

“Lucky you. I love that city.”

A few minutes later she goes with me to the counter and reads out some code that allows them to override the block. Next to me a man in a grey cap is arguing with the other border force officer, a tall thin man.

“Listen to me carefully,” says the border force officer. “I'm going to explain this to you clearly. You have not been approved to depart Australia.”

“But I have applied for an exemption.”

“We don’t have any record of that, sir.”

We walk through empty corridors to reach the boarding area. Most of the lights are off, and the heating too. There is a strange silence and the list of departures fills only half of one of the many screens. It is the same in Doha and in London Heathrow. 

On the flight from London to Spain everyone wears masks. The man across the narrow aisle from me looks at me nervously as I sit down. He shrinks his body away from the man in the seat next to him and drums his gloved hands on his knees. The bursar has a lazy, almost childlike voice. 

“Welcome ladies and gentlemen,” he says. “Please note smoking is not allowed on this flight.”

The flight attendants bring packaged biscuits and bottled water. Nobody speaks. Two seats back a man sits with a plastic mask that covers his entire face. Straps go over the back of his head. I remember the almost empty terminal at Heathrow with the huge screens above us: Keep Your Distance. I remember the taxi driver who took me to my hotel telling me that he waited 14 hours for a passenger, that Heathrow had gone from 20 flights every 30 minutes to 20 flights a day.

Tired and disoriented after the 24 hour flight, I checked into a hotel near Heathrow for the 19 hour stopover. Four men lingered at reception next to a restaurant that was closed and cordoned off. I checked in and followed one of the men into the lift.

“One,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “my room is on level one.”

“One,” he said again, holding up a finger. 

“Okay,” I said. I realized he needed me to swipe my card on the card reader to activate the lift and did so. I didn’t feel like discussing it. I just wanted a shower and a bed. 

“No, no,” he said. “One only.” And he pointed to a sign on the wall of the lift. In capital letters. LIFTS ARE TO BE USED BY ONE PERSON AT A TIME. There was a drawing of three people in a lift and two of them were crossed out. One only.

Then he left the lift, shaking his head. I was obviously too hopeless to understand. He had decided it would be easier to wait for the next lift.

“No, no,” I said. “You go. You go.” And pushing past him I walked out of the lift into the foyer. His three friends and everyone at reception stared at me.

There was a moment’s silence and then he walked back into the lift.

I waited and then anxious to get away, I pressed the lift button. The doors opened and there he was once more, the man I had just spoken to. He glared at me and muttered something to himself. It seemed an eternity before the doors closed again.

At Heathrow a family checked in dressed head to toe in body protection suits. In the queue people eyed each other warily. I stood on the red line on the floor while the airline officer checked my documentation. She opened my passport and looked through it.

“I also have a residency in Spain.”

“Step back sir,” she says. A warning hand comes up.

“I’m sorry.”

I return to stand on the red line. She looks at me through the glass screen. Then she gets on the phone. I feel a tightness in my shoulders and chest. I’m going to have to convince another official to let me through. All of the power I have right now is in my residency card. It is a small piece of green cardboard—a scrap of paper really—something you could easily lose. Every step of the way I have been checking compulsively that the little card is there, opening my wallet and reaching my forefinger in to pull it out. At Heathrow I took it out on a steep elevator and imagined it falling out of my hands, getting caught in the blades and chewed up, or fluttering over the handrail to fall into the air. I checked it before I left the London hotel at 4:00 in the morning, and I checked it again on the bus that took us to the airport while the man beside me moved away and disinfected his hands. I checked it was there after I forgot my bag at Doha. 

The flight lands in Barcelona.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you enjoyed our flight. We are expecting...”

He pauses. What, I think, what are we expecting? To be turned back? To be refused entry?

“We are expecting a pleasant 27 degrees.”

The line of passengers shuffles forward. I get my bag from the overhead locker, check that I have my jacket with me. I take out my passport. We inch forward. The flight attendants nod as we pass, sombre, their faces unsmiling. I hear voices coming from just outside the door of the plane. People are arguing. I try to remember some key words in Spanish: He vivido en España desde 2017. (I have lived in Spain since 2017). Estaba en Australia por tres meses. (I was in Australia for three months). I try to remember which version of the past I should use. ¿Estaba en Australia? ¿Estuve en Australia? I step off the plane onto the tunnel that connects to the airport. It snakes away in front of us. Four national police in their dark uniforms are waiting. These are the ones who carry guns and walk with Alsatians at the big train stations. I’ve seen them with machine guns at Atocha. There are two on each side. On the right, a couple argues with a policeman. I don’t hear what they are saying. I can’t take anything in. Get your passport ready. The two police officers on the left look at me as I step off. They are both behind masks and I can only see their eyes. One of them gestures to me and I stop in front of him. He vivido en España desde... I show him my passport and inside the pocket the little green residency card. He looks at it. He says something to me in Spanish but I don’t understand. 

“¿Cómo?”

“¿Sigue viviendo en esta dirección?” (Are you still living at this address?)

“Sí.”

He takes out the green card and looks at it. Next to us the other police officer stops someone. I look down the tunnel walkway. It is bent and I cannot see the end. I know that only a few steps away is the airport terminal and the baggage claim, and then beyond that is the street and a taxi that will take me to my apartment and my partner, who is waiting to hear from me. Every step of the way he has asked me to message him. My hand grips the handle of my bag. Next to me the couple is still arguing and behind me a line of passengers wait to get off. I think of what the consulate in Australia said. It is up to them to let you in. Maybe they will turn you round and send you back.

I left Australia 44 hours ago. I think of all those empty airports and check-ins and all those hours in the plane. Will it all have been for nothing?

The policeman’s eyes meet mine. 

“Bienvenido a casa,” he says. (Welcome home.)

I walk through the tunnel shaking a little and tears start in my eyes. 

There is one more step. After the baggage claim where a small group of us pick up bags, I walk towards the exit door. Guardia civil officers are there in their green uniforms, checking passports once more. 

One of them looks at my Australian passport. 

Papa alpha, I think. 

“Why were you in Australia?”

“I went to study a course.”

“Were you learning English?”

The officer realizes his mistake as soon as he says it, and looks embarrassed. I appreciate his friendliness and smile behind my mask. He hands me back my passport and card, and I walk out into the sunlight. I call my partner who is waiting anxiously in our apartment.

“I got through,” I say. “I made it home.”

J.R. Hirst is originally from Australia and has lived in Spain since 2017. He is a fiction and non-fiction writer who has had his work published in Right Now, Medium, and Recipes and Refuge. He was shortlisted for the Peter Carey Short Story Award in 2017. He is currently completing his first novel. You can read more from him on his website at jrhirst.com and follow him on Twitter at @jrobertsonhirst.