If you booked the holiday 12 months ago, you dont really have a choice, unless you are prepared to lose the entire cost of the holiday.

Exactly, there’s been an awful lot of blame placed on customers for “booking during a global pandemic” when many have not done this. To then be told by your airline/holiday company that you are to travel on holiday, only to receive a text/email whilst away informing you that you may or may not have to come home early at short notice is not exactly a particularly good experience. Obviously the airlines are not responsible for the sudden reintroduction of quarantine but they do have a duty of care to their customers, or at least they ought to have if they wish to retain a good reputation. Government advice is not currently to end holidays prematurely, this is very much a commercial decision.

Government advice is currently "From 27 July, the FCO advise against all non-essential travel to Spain, including the Balearic and Canary Islands, based on the current assessment of COVID-19 risks in the country." Quite how you determine this does not apply to those already in country on vacation I am not sure?

It's a fine distinction. If "the FCO advise against all non-essential travel to Spain" obviously those already in the country are not going to travel there because they are already there!!

Because it says so two paras down?

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/spain

The UK Govt appears to have decided that it doesn't want any more Brits to go on holiday to Spain. Boris / Rishi have seen how much bringing Thomas Cook's customers home cost in Sept 2019. Boris also knows how much hassle was involved bringing everyone home in March 2020 at the start of the lockdown. HM Govt appears to have decided it is not willing to pay to evacuate everyone back to the UK and would rather pax and airlines just sort it out themselves instead

The phrase new normal needs distanced from otherwise these rules and mask wearing will be in place long after Covid has ceased to be a threat to 3% of the population if everyone is happy to class it as normal.

See reply from another poster above

And my response to Government would be "how you determine this does not apply to those already in country on vacation." It seems positively bizarre to exclude someone from travelling to Spain whilst those who are already there can remain and return as planned? None of this makes sense, and the lack of information on why the decision was taken leads one to believe it was for reasons other than pure spikes in virus cases.
I note TUI have now applied the same dates as Jet2 for Balearics, Canaries & Mainland Spain..

Couldn't have put it better myself.

What would be the benefit of making people come back early? You still have to do 14 day quarantine whenever you come back.

The government aren’t excluding anyone from travelling to Spain. They have, of course, advised against all but essential travel and implemented a 2-week quarantine, thus, for obvious reasons, package holidays can’t go ahead as planned. What exactly is it that “does not apply” to those already in Spain? They will still have to quarantine on return so what would be the point in bringing them back earlier? Or do you mean that they should be left in Spain until further notice with no flight home? In which case, from a purely epidemiological perspective, that may be understandable but it would be a rather harsh stance.

Er, less time spent in a higher risk area means a lower chance of contracting the virus. Not everyone who gets Covid while abroad will simply be okay after 14 days back at home, even if spread to citizens back in the UK is limited by the quarantine.

Yes, but places like the Canaries are not a high risk area. So why the need to bring people back from a low risk area to a real high risk area such as Manchester?

Getting back to Jet2, what they are being criticised for is consolidating return flights, which mainly seems to mean people coming back earlier. So early return flights are available, but people don't want to use them.

What exactly are the government meant to do, send the troops in?

Why bizarre ? The obvious alternative was shown to be seriously daft when the first Covid-19 travel restrictions were brought into operation.
What might be sensible is for airlines to arrange to recognise each others tickets.

Very unlikely to happen - the penalties for acting as a cartel are very high. If an airline wants to be a monopolist, they will act in secret, not in public

To my mind recognising each others tickets during the Covid crisis is a proposal that ought to come from government. It was a system that used to work well on cross-channel ferries.

Imagine BA being considerate enough to provide carriage for a Virgin passenger - how long do you think BA would have to wait before Virgin forwarded the due amount?

Imagine how long Jet2 would have to wait for reimbursement from Ryanair if they gave carriage to a Ryanair passenger?

Can you visualise Ryanair paying £100 to TUI to get a Ryanair passenger back from Tenerife (someone who possibly only paid Ryanair £29.99 for his ticket)?

An airline is not a charity - it is a business (needless to say).

Putting 10 pax on a TUI flight might be cheaper than sending your own a/c to collect them.