[ad_1]
The Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands and Andalusia are upset that the Madrid government has ordered a 14-day quarantine for foreign visitors.
A man cleans the terrace of a restaurant in Barcelona. Taken on May 8, 2020.
The hope of receiving guests from abroad again soon only lasted briefly for the director of the Mallorcan hotel Sergio Alonso. His hotel, located in the center of Palma de Mallorca, was one of the first to open its doors again after a 50-day break in Corona. But only 24 hours later the bad news came from Madrid. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez ordered a two-week quarantine for all foreign visitors, which takes effect on May 15 and also applies to returnees with a Spanish passport. The epidemic had hit particularly hard in this country, and now the government wants to prevent new hosts from becoming a risk factor.
In fact, the first Corona patient in Spain, where the pandemic has claimed more than 27,000 lives, was a German tourist on the Canary Island of La Gomera. The disease was diagnosed in late January. But that was more than three months ago, and the number of people infected in Spain has also decreased. The announcement by some airlines that they would soon be flying to destinations in the Mediterranean country had also boosted the tourism industry.
No one wants to be locked in the hotel for 14 days.
The news of the forced quarantine, therefore, seemed like a cold shower. “If we cannot open now in the summer season, the situation would be really desperate,” Balearic Prime Minister Francina Armengol said Thursday in an interview with foreign correspondents. Much had been invested to prepare for tourists and to ensure their safety and health. Last year, including local visitors, 16 million guests came to the Balearic Islands, this year only a fraction of them are expected to arrive. A pilot project with German tour operator TUI had already been planned to bring tourists to the island from mid-June, but the project could initially be a waste given the new Madrid regulation. Negotiations are currently underway with Madrid to launch the project, Armengol said. However, it is already clear that the Mallorcan economy is at risk of record losses if the tourism sector does not catch up in July at the latest.
But this applies not only to the Balearic Islands, but also to other regions such as the Canary Islands or Andalusia, which are highly dependent on tourism. Tourism, together with the construction sector, is the most important industry in Spain and represents 12.3 percent of the gross domestic product. “The new quarantine introduced means that no tourist comes from abroad,” said Andalusian camp chief Iñigo Alfonso Moreno-Bonilla. No one wanted to be locked in a hotel for 14 days, the conservative said.
The Spanish tourism lobby association Exceltur was also surprised by Sánchez’s decision, which is not entirely in line with the plans of the EU Commission to reopen the borders before the summer holidays. “The Brussels proposal makes much more sense than that of our own government,” Exceltur president José-Luis Zoreda said.
Criticism of Sánchez’s authoritarian leadership style
Meanwhile, a group of critics has been formed in Spain who are not satisfied with Sánchez’s crisis management and feel that he is erratic. Even friends of the socialist party like Ximo Puig, the country’s head of Valencia, are increasingly upset by the fact that Sánchez makes his decisions without help. At the beginning of the week, the prime minister relaxed the crown measures in much of Spain, while in Valencia only a limited part of the region benefited from the relief of the closure. That is not understandable, says Puig. Because the virus is well controlled here, just like in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands.
Friends of the Valencian party are not the only ones who see Sánchez’s leadership style as authoritarian. Resistance to centralized decisions is also growing in the Basque Country and in Catalonia. Catalan parliamentarians from left-wing Republican Esquerra (ERC), who made it possible for Sánchez to become head of a minority government in January, missed a memo and voted against in the latest vote to prolong the alarm. However, Sánchez does not want to deviate from his course of extending the state of alarm for another month until the end of June. This is the only way to ensure the correct implementation of your phased plan and the transition to the so-called “new normal”.
