There are a lot of ‘I don’t understands’ in this situation. Like in the US, I presume the people who do check in in Brazil are port employees, not MSC employees. This cruise boarded guests in San Paulo and Rio… but they called at ports in the Canary Islands, (Spain), Madeira (Portugal) and then Malaga (Spain), all Schengen country ports, before being detained in Barcelona. Were they trying to debark there? I don’t remember my docs being examined again until I got to the airport…
Or could it be that during the cruise the people were researched and found to have false docs and Barcelona was the best place to stop them? I know when airlines deliver a passenger who turns out to not be admissible, whether for bad background check or fake docs, the airline is responsible for putting them on the first flight back to their point of origin at airline expense. So, does MSC have to pay for flights for all 69 back to Brazil, or Bolivia? And if they are not admissible to Spain, they can’t send them to a hotel until their flights. What a mess. EM