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The government of Pedro Sánchez approved this Sunday morning the establishment of a state of emergency during an extraordinary Council of Ministers. It will be prohibited to circulate between 11 pm and 6 am, setting up what the Spanish press calls “night lockdown”.
However, on this occasion, the state of emergency is expected to last for six months, more precisely until May 9, with mandatory curfews, each autonomous community having the margin to delay or advance the time of the curfew. . The closure of borders is not foreseen and the Canary Islands will have an exceptional status due to the low level of contagion and the importance of tourism.
Other restrictions are also envisaged, namely in terms of social gatherings. No more than six people can meet, unless they are living together. Displacement between autonomous communities will be prohibited, except in situations duly justified for health or work reasons. The control will be done by the security forces. The goal, according to Sánchez, is to bring the number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants down to 25. Currently, in Spain, there are 400 cases of covid-19 infection per 100,000 inhabitants.
The covid-19 virus has so far infected more than a million people in Spain (a barrier that was crossed, by the way, on Wednesday of this week, becoming the first country in Western Europe to exceed one million infected). About 35 thousand people died.
“El País” had already anticipated, based on information from executive sources, that the measure could take effect for several weeks. The majority of autonomous communities supported it, given the exponential increase in contagion cases in the country.
It is one of those provided for by the Spanish Constitution (Article 116) for “natural catastrophes, health crisis, crisis in the supply of essential goods and paralysis of essential services”, the others are the state of emergency and siege.
The state of emergency was enacted for the first time in Spain on December 10, 2010, when a strike by air traffic controllers forced the cancellation of air traffic in the country. The second time was during the covid-19 pandemic, on March 14, which lasted 98 days.
At that time, drastic measures were imposed to try to contain the transmission of the virus (which implied an economic paralysis), which is not the intention of the Executive at this time, says “El País”, which speaks of “lighter measures.” Limiting the country completely is not an option on the table.
