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An excavator removes the huge stones that obstruct the access to a winery in Barcelona. When they do, police cars and vans drive past the compound. Riot police reinforce the members of the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan Police), who have tried to enter during the last hours. All that device, with 200 policemen, was needed to evict an illegal party in Barcelona this weekend, which brought together about half a thousand people who did not keep the biosecurity measures and refused to leave.
(Also read: They cut the music to end a party in the middle of a pandemic in France)
A woman with a naked torso rebukes the agents. “We are listening to music, we have every right, there are no fights”he tells them. Neither she nor her companions wear masks and no one maintains a safety distance. Finally the rave (three-day party) ends, after at least 40 hours since it started: from December 31 before 9 p.m., when the neighbors reported it, until January 2 at noon. The idea of the organizers, however, was to continue until the 4th.
The incident put on the display the danger of illegal parties among young people, which have been taking place in Spain since the summer.
“Right now having parties and gathering people without security measures is a real madness”, explains to EL TIEMPO Dr. Fernando Prados, coordinator of the Hospital de Emergencias Nurse Isabel Zendal, which has just been inaugurated in Madrid to face the coronavirus. “But the problem is not only that these people can be infected, but has their coexistence with other people who are going to put at risk for sure; If they do not follow hygiene norms or those that the authorities are saying, it is easy that among so many there is someone who may be infected and therefore they can become infected and pass it on to their close group, to their relatives ”, he adds.
(Read here: The countries that have confirmed the presence of the new strain of covid)
Youth gatherings are played all over the country, whether in closed-door restaurants and bars, in discotheques, and in private homes. There have been cases in which the assistants hide under beds and inside closets so that the Police do not detect them.
In Madrid, for example, the Police have evacuated up to 350 meetings in a weekend. “They are gathering people, who do not know if they are infected or not, and that is an important vector of spread”, Says José Luis Morcillo, general commissioner of the Municipal Police of Madrid. “And the premises, as it is closed, and for fear of the police, they do not let customers out, they take their phones, they do not let them call by phone,” he adds. “We have had cases of having kidnapped, illegally detained, about forty people on several occasions.”
In Spain there are more than 51 thousand deaths from covid-19 and the third wave is beginning to be talked about. Youth gatherings have been one of the main means of contagion since the lockdown ended in June of last year and are responsible for numerous second wave outbreaks.
“This type of meeting is not that they should be prohibited, it is that people should be aware that they are doing enormous harm to the rest because in public health the failure of one is another focus of the possibility of infecting other people and the more people are infected, the greater the number of people who will have severe symptoms and the greater the number of people who die”, Warns Prados.
JUANITA SAMPER OSPINA
TIME CORRESPONDENT
MADRID
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