Coronavirus could devastate Malaga and Costa del Sol for THREE YEARS with ‘zero’ appetite for tourism

A SPANISH hotel boss fears the deadly coronavirus pandemic will devastate the holiday trade in the Costas for three years.

Luis Callejon Sune - president of the Association of Costa del Sol Hoteliers - likened the outbreak to a war saying it will leave "zero" appetite for tourism.

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He told Malaga-based newspaper Sur: “The consequences of this situation are the same as a war.

“The calculations we’re working with is that for the summer and the rest of the year there’ll be a zero market.

“Even if the number of coronavirus cases starts to go down you look around and see that in England they’re still prioritising the economy over health which is going to slow the return to normality.

“The Germans are calculating 60 per cent of people will become infected and the French say everyone will be.

“Who are we going to let into our country? We’ll be left with the national market which will suffer such economic devastation that the first thing people are going to go without are holidays.

He added: “It will be a zero market.The only simile we have for this is a war and you don’t recover from war in a day.”

The behaviour of Brits holidaying in Spain during the national coronavirus lockdown has been under the microscope in recent days.

The Sun Online earlier told how drunks Brits were annoying cops in Benidorm after dismissing the deadly virus as "just the flu".

Angry police were filmed clearing streets - and pubs - of people as the determined partygoers ignore Spain's Covid-19 quarantine.

Then on Tuesday it was reported a Brit tourist was dragged out of a hotel swimming pool in handcuffs after flouting strict rules.

The gobby woman was hauled from the water and arrested in Tenerife to scenes of jubilant cheering from other guests.

Hotel boss Callejon Sune delivered his alarming message as Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez addressed a virtually-empty congress four days after declaring a state of emergency.

He began by saying: “My most sincere condolences to the families of the dead, those who have died alone, people who have not been able to see their grandchildren. This is a cruel illness.

“The virus is affecting us all. This is an unprecedented challenge, a challenge that has forced us to take exceptional measures. It’s a health, social and economic emergency."

He also addressed criticism Spain did not act quickly enough to tackle the virus despite seeing how it had devastated other countries.

“With what we know today the world would not have acted as it did yesterday," he said. “The state of emergency in Spain was decreed when it was confirmed it was vital.”

King Felipe VI will address the Spanish nation in a live televised address at 9pm tonight.

More than 500 people with coronavirus have died in the ongoing crisis in Spain.  The number of confirmed cases stood at 11,650 this morning.

At least 19 people have died at a Madrid care home for the elderly and a further 75 OAPs are said to have tested positive for the virus.

Malaga-based youth team football coach Francisco Garcia, 20, died on Sunday after being diagnosed with leukaemia, coronavirus and pneumonia.

He was admitted to hospital four days earlier after the onset of what his family and their GP thought at first was a common cold.

Spanish daily El Mundo reported today A&E doctors in Spain are calculating the number of people who will die from the coronavirus nationwide could reach 87,000.