You have been getting around quite a bit, @ Chef66. You must be by far the forum member with the widest experience in presenting your vaccination QR code in various countries. For the time being, it looks like this is going to stay. Perhaps it’s useful to explain it a bit further because the terminology is confusing?
There is the QR vaccination code. It is a technical standard in all EU countries, and there are a number of non-EU countries, among them the UK and New Zealand, who issue a vaccination QR that corresponds to the same technical standards as the EU standard. This means that everyone who got vaccinated in an EU country or countries like the UK or New Zealand are “good to go” and don’t need to do anything, except carrying their QR on paper or on their mobile phones with them in case they need to show it.
Numerous EU countries have developed a national app where people can download, store and display their vaccination QR. These apps have different names:
Pass Sanitaire or
Tous Anti Covid in France,
Covid Safe Ticket in Belgium,
Pasaporte Verde in Italy,
Luca App or
Impfpass in Germany, and so on. When a restaurant or hotel is obliged by law to check the vaccination status of their customer, the staff often say that they want to see this app but all they need to see is the QR code. I don’t know whether Spain has such an app that can be used to display one’s vaccination QR.
Numerous EU countries have developed another national app which restaurant or hotel staff use to scan the customer’s vaccination QR code to verify that it is valid and to see the customer’s name. As far as I can tell, Spain has not developed such a national scanning app. I was a bit amused to see that one Spanish region advises to use the scanning app developed and used in Luxembourg and another region advises to use the Swiss scanning app.
As
@Chef66 has observed, it’s a mixed bag overall. Although it may be the law that say restaurant staff have to check your vaccination status, they may not do so at all; or only ask you whether you have the code and you confirm; or want you to show the code to them on your mobile phone; or scan it and verify that the app says “OK”; or scan it and also check your ID.
Spain does not seem to have embraced this system as fervently as other EU countries have done. Some Spanish regions like Castilla y Leon don‘t check vaccination status at all for access to restaurants, hotels and albergues. That means no hassle of this kind during a big chunk of the Camino Francés.
i know that in France and also in Germany, people can obtain a digital QR code if they present their ID and their vaccination card in a pharmacy. France offered this possibility also online to foreign visitors but this option is currently not available. I don’t know whether pharmacies in a Spanish region would be able to do the same for pilgrims from countries like South Africa or the USA or Canada for example. Anecdotal evidence indicates that, at least in the past and when required, they just had to show their foreign vaccination cards for access to restaurants, hotels and albergues.
Apologies for the length of this post! And Buen Camino to
@jsalt.