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The director of the European Grouping for Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) of Río Minho told Lusa that the confinement announced today by the Consell de Galicia for 60 municipalities in that region will not affect the daily lives of cross-border workers.
“All Portuguese workers can continue working in Galicia, and Galician workers can continue working in Portugal. Fundamentally, there will be restrictions on hotels and restaurants, on sports, especially in the smaller counties. Those closest to the Viana do Castelo district are Tui, which borders Valença, and Porriño, ”Lusa Fernando Nogueira told the agency today.
The Xunta de Galicia, a Spanish autonomous community that borders northern Portugal, has decided to confine 60 municipalities in the region as of this Friday, including the closure of non-essential activities, such as restaurants and the like.
Fernando Nogueira, who is also mayor of Vila Nova de Cerveira, in the Viana do Castelo district, said that the measures announced today by the Galician City Council “respond to the claims of the Rio Miño EGTC”.
“It was necessary that the measures to combat the covid-19 pandemic were similar, on both sides of the Miño river. This form of confinement announced today by Galicia is identical to that applied in Portugal, first in the municipalities of Paços de Ferreira, Felgueiras and Lousada and, on Saturday, 121 municipalities, including Vila Nova de Cerveira, ”he said.
Fernando Nogueira insisted that closing the border between the two countries “does not make sense.”
“It is not necessary to close borders. I believe that regional and national authorities will have the same opinion. This is a main point ”, he reinforced.
Created in February 2018 and based in Valença, the Rio Minho EGTC covers a total of 26 municipalities: the 10 municipalities of the Viana do Castelo region that make up the Alto Minho Inter-municipal Community (CIM) and 16 Galician municipalities of the province of Pontevedra.
Also the president of the Confederação Empresarial do Alto Minho (CEVAL), Luís Ceia, said that cross-border workers will not be affected by the Galician closure.
The official indicated figures for 2019 that point to “about 622 Portuguese workers who travel daily to Galicia to work and 9,089 Portuguese residents in Galicia, with a work contract.”
CEVAL represents some 5,000 companies in the Viana do Castelo district that employ more than 19,000 workers.
The president of the regional executive, Alberto Núnez Feijóo, announced that starting at 3:00 p.m. (2:00 p.m. in Lisbon) on Friday and for a month, the measures to limit the movement of people will affect a total of 60 municipalities , where Approximately 60% of the population lives, including seven cities and the surrounding areas, as well as 17 smaller places with high infection rates from the covid-19 pandemic.
Feijóo assured that it is a “difficult” decision that will remain in force for a month, although during that time it can be reviewed, and that they are measures for “the common good” of the Galician population, taking into account the “worrying situation”. the evolution of the pandemic.
In the rest of Galicia, which will not have these restrictions, there will also be limitations on entry to shopping centers, as well as non-school public transport, where occupancy is limited to only 50% of the places, in general terms .
The greatest restrictions will also apply to municipalities with a cumulative rate of more than 200 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and an “upward” trend in the notification of cases.
The restrictions imply the closure of all activities considered not essential, so that it will be allowed to go to work, school, trips to care for children and adults and all medical trips.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 1.2 million deaths in more than 47.5 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal 2,694 people died out of 156,940 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate General of Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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