remove span elements after export import

I’m shifting a site to a new host and doing all sorts of updates too including theme change. (I didn’t create the original site)

I used export/import and thought everything was fine until the customer asked for a change of link colour.

In the old site the links were coded properly as
zzz
so that the style sheet dictated the colour

But they are now
<span style=color:”0000ff”>zzz</span>
so the style sheet has no impact.

I don’t know where the problem came from but does anyone know of any fix that can remove the style from the span throughout the rather large site?