If travelling with my family I'd have to go through the family queue which is a manual check as the age limit for automated gates is 18 and above in Spain. So there's no change there.

If I'm not travelling with family, and I can't use EU citizen automated gates because I'm a resident, then almost everyone remaining (Britons without residency) would be queuing up to go through the EES gates and there would be very few people queuing up to be be dealt with completely manually.

This is why EES has ‘failed’ and is outdated IMHO before its even started. Any newly implemented system should be able to recognise its legal residents etc electronically rather than then having to queue to be processed manually. I’m not an EU resident but I feel sorry for those that are potentially having to waste time in queues (port dependent) to have papers examined etc by a border guard. The whole thing should be electronic regardless.

I live in Spain so very seldom have any problems passing in or out of the country

At the moment 😁