MADRID, March 13 (Xinhua) -- The regions of Valencia, the Balearic islands, the Canary Islands and Murcia will be the parts of Spain that will most suffer the effects of Britain's departure from the European Union (EU).
This was one of the conclusions of a report by the Spanish government published on Monday in El Pais, one of Spain's largest-circulation daily newspapers.
The report said that the areas would feel the effects "due to their exposure to British tourism and other key sectors" which include agriculture and the car and pharmaceutical industries.
Over 17 million British citizens visited Spain during their holidays in 2016 and the report predicted the number of tourists to the Canary Islands, Valencia, the Balearics and Catalonia would fall as a result of Brexit. This would not only include a fall in direct income from visitors, but could also lead to a drop in financing from Brussels.
The effects of this could be most seriously felt in the Canary Islands, which currently welcomes around a third of the total number of British visitors to Spain, especially as an "ultra-peripheral region" of the EU situated off the north-west coast of Africa and accessible only by boat or plane.
Britain is currently a major importer of Spanish agricultural products, but with the expected rise in "non-tariff barriers" and new health controls that Brexit would entail, export to the UK would become more difficult.
Meanwhile, the withdrawal of the UK from the EU's fisheries agreements "will affect the Spanish fleet," according to the report, which stated that 80 Spanish boats currently fish in British waters while 40 boats of the British fleet actually have Spanish owners and would lose their current EU status.
The report said there was a strong need to "negotiate a bilateral fishing agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom".
