A British expat was denied his chance to taste Nando’s Peri-Peri sauce for the first time because of Brexit regulations.

Spanish border guards seized the signature hot sauce from the chicken restaurant chain after Joseph Lathey returned from a quick trip to Gibraltar.

He was told that nearly all of his £43 shopping spree would be confiscated unless he returned to the Rock, which left the single market with the UK on January 1. 

So the remain-voter managed to sell his remaining £37 worth of food, including samosas and flatbreads, for £20. 

Mr Lathey, who lives just across the border in La Línea de la Concepción, was told the medium-hot Nando’s mixture couldn’t cross the border because it contained processed vegetables.

The 27-year-old explained: ‘I turned up at the border and there’s a guard that’s always on duty there, so I opened my bag, just as a courtesy really, just to show him that I didn’t have anything.

‘The Peri-Peri Nando’s sauce was in there, too. It had onion puree on the ingredients and that’s one of the things they said to me: “look, it’s got processed vegetables on it, you can’t have it”.’

He added: ‘I’ve not actually had Nando’s Peri-Peri sauce before and I was really looking forward to trying it.’

It is the latest in a string of seizures at European borders involving Brits since a trade deal was struck with the EU. 

Earlier this month, a trucker had his ham sandwich taken by Dutch officials, who told him: ‘Welcome to Brexit’. 

Mr Lathey, who moved as a child from Torquay, Devon, to Sabinillas, Malaga, said the guards normally ‘just take a glance and wave you through’. 

But, this time, he explained: He casually started going through things and picking stuff up. He seemed a bit confused, which I was a bit taken aback by because that never happens.

‘So then he asked me to step aside and he took me over to the guys who usually check the tobacco and the alcohol.

‘They took my bag and they started going through it, and pulling everything out and reading the backs of labels.’

Mr Lathey continued: ‘He just started pulling stuff out and said “no, no, no, no* but you can have these two things”’ and pulled out two bags of spice that I had and said “that’s the only things that you can keep”.’

Mr Lathey, who moved as a child from Torquay, Devon, to Sabinillas, Malaga, estimates that he was only able to keep £6 worth of his £43 shop.

So instead of binning the rest, he offered it up for £20 on Facebook and, a Gibraltar resident took him up on the offer.

Joseph says the disruption is ‘100%’ because of Brexit,  but said he believed that the new rules only prohibited meat and dairy.

Yet despite being convinced that the border guards were unsure of the rules themselves, Mr Lathey felt powerless to question their decisions when all the legal documentation was in Spanish.

He said: ‘When it comes to the border police, you can’t really argue with them.

‘If they tell you no, then that’s it, you’re not going to get over the border with it, unless you’ve got a lawyer with you – how am I supposed to argue my case?

‘I’m fairly fluent in Spanish, I’ve been here for about 20 years but I’m not used to reading legal jargon from a document written by the Andalusian government.’

If the rules remain strict, Mr Lathey expects it will lead to a surge in smuggling.

He said: ‘Obviously, we can buy everything that we need in Spain, there’s no problem there.

‘The thing is that nice things that we want – your Cadbury’s chocolate and your digestive biscuits all that kind of stuff – you can only get in Gibraltar.

‘What that will mean going forward: I can guarantee you that everyone is going to carry on bringing those things through, they’re just going to find imaginative ways of doing it.’

An advisory note from the Gibraltar Government warns that all meat and milk will be unable to enter the EU from the peninsula, but suggests it is unaware of any prohibition on vegetables.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Source: Read Full Article