EU citizens are being kicked out of the UK. In Spain people are asking: why not treat Brits the same way? | María Ramírez

Does turning away Europeans with valid paperwork really make British borders safe and secure'? It's hard to imagine

Four years after the UK officially left the European Union, you can still be taken aback reading about Brexit's self-defeating, if sometimes unintended, consequences. A Spanish woman was detained at Luton airport and denied re-entry after a Christmas visit to Spain, even though she had been living and working in the UK with her family for years. A French woman, married to a British citizen, had to give up her job after an apparent paperwork mix-up.

Trapped in the grey area of backlog and conflicting rules, like tens of thousands of EU citizens after Brexit, these cases are a recurring tale in post-Brexit Europe. Asked by the Guardian about the plight of the Spanish woman, the Home Office response parroted generic lines: Border Force's number one priority is to keep our borders safe and secure, and we will never compromise on this," a spokesperson said.

Maria Ramirez is a journalist and deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, a news outlet in Spain