Murcia Today Weekly Bulletin 24th December

Image 1: the municipal belén in Lorca

The week leading into Christmas is usually as dead as a dodo, with all major political decisions made and everyone winding down for a few days off.

But not this year.

    Unfortunately Coronavirus has ensured that this will be a Christmas like no other, so let’s kick-off with Covid and although it would have been preferable to exit into Christmas with good news on the table, unfortunately that’s not possible, and we enter the festive period with Spain returning to an “extreme risk” classification as the accumulated incidence rate goes back over 250 cases per 100,000.

Image: Evolution of Spanish cases in the "second wave"

13 days ago the figure had gone to 199 and hopes were high that the gradual decrease in the number of new cases could be sustained and the entry into the period of highest risk when families would want to meet and celebrate together would co-incide with declining numbers of new cases, but since hitting 199, the AI rate across the whole of Spain has been quietly climbing, one or two points a day, and on Wednesday slipped over the 250 mark, taking Spain back into the extreme risk category.

By region, this is the current AI level across the country per 100,000 of population over 14 days as of Thursday;
Balearic Islands 455; Madrid 361; Valencia Region 346; Extremadura 337; Castilla la Mancha 305; Catalunya 301; Basque Country 243; La Rioja, 226; Aragón 217; Navarra 190; Galicia 178; Castilla y León 169; Cantabria 162; Asturias 147; Murcia 160; Andalucía 147; Canary Islands 139.
Ceuta 120; Melilla with 253 (these last two enclaves on the African coastline);

All of these figures have risen since last Friday with the exception of Asturias, Cantabria, Navarra and Ceuta, the most significant increases being Madrid, Balearic Islands, Valencia Region and Catalunya.

It must be stressed that Spain is performing well compared to its European neighbours. According to the weekly figures produced by the ECDC European Centre for Disease Control, surrounding nations are reporting AI rates as follows; France 269, United Kingdom 475, Italy 371, Germany 393, Netherlands 765, Belgium 299, Sweden 878, Portugal 502, Austria 397, Denmark 754, Greece 145, Ireland 107, Luxembourg 1039, Slovenia 965.

As of week 2020-51, 403,990 deaths have been reported in the EU/EEA and the UK: Italy (68 799), United Kingdom (67 401), France (60 549), Spain (49 260), Germany (26 275), Poland (25 397), Belgium (18 766), Romania (14 394), Netherlands (10 477), Czechia (10 411), Hungary (8 282), Sweden (8 163), Bulgaria (6 609), Portugal (6 134), Austria (5 216), Greece (4 172), Croatia (3 257), Slovenia (2 368), Ireland (2 158), Slovakia (1 555), Lithuania (1 039), Denmark (1 035), Finland (489), Luxembourg (440), Latvia (439), Norway (404), Malta (190), Estonia (174), Cyprus (91), Iceland (28) and Liechtenstein (18).

The Spanish Government and the 17 regional governments are all fully aware that the combination of increased mobility, increase in indoor gatherings, increase in number of social contacts and high existing level of coronavirus cases is an undesirable situation and is likely to lead to an increase in transmission during the festive season and early part of January. In order to try and limit the potential strain this combination could put on the health service, extensive measures have been put in place all over Spain in an attempt to limit the number of contacts, without imposing complete bans.

The restrictions continue to change endlessly, but by now, those resident in the country should be aware of the restrictions in their particular region. As this product focuses on the Murcia Region, these are the principal measures of which residents should be aware:

- On December 24th, 25th, 31st and January 1st hospitality establishments must close at 6:00 p.m. and may reopen at 9:00 p.m. then continue service until the curfew begins; on the 24th and 31st this is at 01:30 and on the 25th and 1st this is until 23:00.The regional premier said that this permits families to eat together at either an early or late sitting, but aims to prevent large gatherings over a period of time.

- This means that the public are allowed out until 1.30 am on the 24th and 31st, but must be home by that time, and until 23:00 on the 25th and 1st.

- The number of people allowed to meet on these four days is 10, and cannot comprise more than three households. So groups of 10 people may gather either in a domestic environment or in a restaurant on these four days only. For the remainder of the festive season the group size is limited to 6 people.

- The regional perimeter border remains closed for all but essential journeys throughout the festive period, so it is not possible to leave and enter the Region except for justified reasons.

- The Murcia government has decided not to allow residents from other areas of Spain to visit “allegados” or nearest and dearest, friends, and has limited the exceptional entry of non-residents between the 23rd December and 6th January to visit FAMILY MEMBERS ONLY.

- So this means that the borders remain closed for anyone from other areas of Spain coming to their holiday properties, taking a holiday, or going to visit “friends” throughout the festive period.

- The regional government is offering free antigen tests to those visiting family members in the region, which must be pre-booked.

- The Los Alcázares municipality is the only one still confined and this will be reviewed again on Monday. Residents of the municipality are permitted to visit family members during the festive period.

- Bars and restaurants are permitted to open as per the restrictions agreed last Monday (click to see details of your area) and this will be reviewed again on Monday.

For residents of the region there is a good degree of freedom as we can all move around as we want to, shop wherever we want to, eat out (booking is highly recommended as capacity limits are in place everywhere) and see friends.

The only major restriction to be aware of is that the border of the neighbouring Valencia region (Alicante Province) is closed completely and no visiting family or friends across the border is permitted at all (residents of the province are not allowed to go visiting outside of the region either).

The amount of entertainment laid on this festive season is very limited, with most of the efforts focused on providing entertainment for children online and there are no cabalgatas or parades which would encourage people to gather. If you want to go out, there are municipal nativity scenes in all towns and cities and plenty of places such as castles to visit in which low occupancy is guaranteed; Lorca castle is open free all over the festive season and Águilas has a castle with fabulous views and plenty of space to avoid everybody else, the beaches are empty and a glorious place to walk……there is plenty to explore in this region without putting yourself at risk. See the where to go section for a few suggestions.

Moving around Spain isn´t an option this festive season. Valencia is the only region to have totally closed off its borders to everyone but every other region has a mountain of local and regional restrictions. Extremadura, Murcia, Melilla and Ceuta will only allow visits to family members and have closed their borders to everyone else. Several regions, such as Madrid, Aragon, Navarra, La Rioja and the Basque Country, are requesting a “document of responsibility” being completed before travelling to prove that the journey is to visit friends or family and the traveller is not going to a holiday home, the remaining regions are mainly permitting visits to friends and family, continuing to impose curfews and restricting the size of gatherings, opening hours of bars, shops and businesses etc.

For British nationals, this will only effect those of us already here, as Spain has prohibited the entry of non-residents until after January 5th due to the detection of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK. It’s a nightmare situation for all of those who had booked flights months ago to visit family and friends this festive season as the airlines are still operating the flights, but only those already resident in Spain and returning home, or those travelling for work or essential reasons are being allowed to board.

Those who still have the option to change their flights can do so, but for many more the short notice given means that they have little option other than to write-off the money spent on the flights.

And it’s not even possible to post presents off to loved ones in Spain as the Post Office has temporarily suspended all postal services to Spain due to the current build-up of lorries caused by the closure of the French borders this week and many courier companies have suspended over-land services as well due to the same problem!

There’s nothing else to do other than nip down to the bodega and pick up a couple of excellent bottles of bargain Spanish wine, along with a few nibbles and relax out on the terrace at home in the 20 degrees of ridiculously warm Christmas weather and stop worrying about it all!

Vaccinations
At least the vaccination programme is ready to start in Spain. The first two containers of the Pfizer vaccine have arrived and what the health service is calling a “symbolic” act of starting the vaccinations will take place on Sunday 27th across Spain, the first patient to receive a vaccine in Spain being an elderly care home resident in Guadalajará, but in reality the vaccination campaign won´t begin in earnest until after the Three Kings period.

The Spanish authorities have arranged for vaccines to be stored in central locations and distributed out every Monday to the 17 regional health authorities and at the moment Spain will receive an allocation of 4.5 million vaccines in the first three months of the year.

This is obviously only enough to vaccinate 5% of the population of the country, so the initial batches of vaccines will be used to vaccinate those most at risk in care homes and health service staff; the remainder of the population will have to wait months before receiving a vaccine unless other vaccines are approved, in which case the number of doses supplied will increase.

The Region of Murcia will receive 67 vials of Pfizer's Covid vaccine -335 doses- on Sunday at noon, which will be distributed at the 'Mensajeros de La Paz' nursing home in San Pedro del Pinatar and the center for people with disabilities de Churra, in Murcia. The forecast advanced by the regional government is that each week 12,675 doses will be received -13 trays, 195 vials-, reaching a total of 50,700 people in three months.

The attempts of the Murcian health authority to arrange immediate vaccines for health personnel have been thwarted by lack of trained personnel to administer the doses to their colleagues; exhausted staff are unwilling to work extra hours over the festive season after a gruelling year, and so the initial doses will all be allocated to centres for the elderly.

The national government hopes to have 15-20 million people vaccinated by June.

New varient of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK and Gibraltar
Over the last few weeks, the United Kingdom has faced a rapid increase in COVID-19 cases in South East England, and analysis of viral genome sequence data identified that a large proportion of cases belonged to a new single variant. This is significantly more transmissible than previously circulating variants, with an estimated increased transmissibility of up to 70%. Although there is no indication at this point of increased infection severity associated with the new variant, which has also been found in Denmark (the variant associated with mink) and the Netherlands, Belgium and Gibraltar (in which one case was detected in November), this has nontheless sparked off a major reaction from other countries concerned to prevent its spread to their own territories, amongst them Spain. More than 50 countries imposed a temporary ban on passenger travel from the UK, and Spain has now extended its ban until 5th January.

Gibraltar has also adopted the same measures as Spain, the big concern being the constant interchange of workers who live in the Campo de Gibraltar on the Spanish mainland, which lies within the Cadíz province of the Andalucía Region and the Rock itself.

There has been a sudden increase in the number of cases in Gibraltar, to which the local government has responded by recommending parents stop taking their children to school, banning visits in centres for the elderly and also limiting flight arrivals to residents only.

The Spanish Government has increased border checks and is itself not admitting non-Spanish nationals to Spain.

The Andalucian Government, meanwhile, has announced that it will re-check all positive tests found in UK nationals arriving in the region during the last month to look for the new variant. Health Minister Salvador Illa, remains confident that the new variant has not yet been identified anywhere on the Spanish mainland.

This situation in Gibraltar has also brought to the fore the whole topic of how the border between Spain and Gibraltar will operate post-Brexit and Spain is keen to avoid the prospect of having a Schengen frontier border with Gibraltar. Talks between the two countries are continuing.

Lorries
This leads inevitably to the lorry driver situation.
At this time of year Murcian lorry drivers are usually busy ferrying lorryloads of produce across the channel, as the UK imports most of its salad produce from Spain during the winter months. Over 2,000 Spanish lorries are amongst the 5,000 plus lorries caught up in the UK in the sudden closure of the French border and 10,000 in total; the regional transport association believes that 1500-1800 of the vehicles belong to Murcian hauliers.

There has been considerable anger in Spain at the lack of support given to the lorry drivers and images showing British volunteers climbing the perimeter fence of Manston airport to give food to the stranded truckers have provoked reactions from every quarter, the Spanish authorities unable to understand why portable toilet and washing facilities and food was not given to the thousands forced to wait inside the airfield and on the roadside.

The Spanish Government has today sent a consular representative to help Spanish nationals stranded in the queue, the Public Prosecutor has written to his counterparts in the UK and France, and even though the lorries have started to move it is obvious that most of the drivers won´t even be off British soil by Christmas, never mind back at home with their families.The British transport minister said today that the backlogs are so severe that they now hope to clear the trucks "in time for the new year".

The knock-on effects are being felt in British supermarkets which are unable to replenish supplies and in Murcia suppliers are unable to deliver products which had been ordered specifically for this period; some drivers are refusing to accept loads to the UK for fear of being caught up in days of delays and other drivers who should have been on another trip back to the UK with pre-ordered produce are still stuck in the lorrypark having been unable to get back across the channel. It’s highly likely that farmers will end up abandoning produce in the fields as they are unable to sell it to their normal clients in the UK. It’s a real mess.

Image: new cases in Murcia (top) and hospitalisations

Murcia

The Thursday covid figures unfortunately followed the same path as the national totals and confirmed a renewed upward trend, with 246 new cases taking the total to date up to 58,082 and three deaths taking this total to 720.

Of the 246 new positives, 73 correspond to the municipality of Murcia, 43 to Cartagena, 24 to Lorca, 12 to Totana, 10 to Cieza, 8 to Fuente Álamo, 8 to Jumilla, 6 to Los Alcázares, 6 to San Javier, 5 to Moratalla, and 5 to Torre Pacheco.

As of today we have 3,495 active cases in the region, well below the 11,000 at the peak of the second wave, but a figure still high enough to be causing concern about the forthcoming festivities.

Hospitalisations are at almost the same levels as Friday when the last bulletin was sent;  we have 235 hospitalised today compared to 231 on Friday and there are now 68 in intensive care as opposed to 63 on Friday.

The accumulated incidence rates in the region are 84 over the last 7 days and 174 over 14 days (compared to 155 on Friday), so confirm the upward trend. The percentage of positive tests has fluctuated considerably this week, ranging from 3% to 9%, but today has settled back down to 7%, slightly higher than the 6-6.5% of last week.

There's little more to be said about the situation in Murcia other than that the regional health service is coping with the current levels, the figures are higher than the authorities had hoped and are going the wrong way; how sensible Murcianos will be over Christmas remains to be seen, and all we can do is hope that the restrictions help to keep levels well below the Spanish average as they are at the moment.

Migration

One group of individuals not looking forward to a happy Christmas are the Guardia Civíl, who have complained again this week that the Hotel El Cenajo in Moratalla has been re-opened to house the irregular migrants who have arrived on the Murcian shorelines in the last few days and must now be quarantined as some of their number tested positive for coronavirus.

The hotel was finally closed on December 9th when the previous batch of illegal immigrants was given the all-clear and the grounds disinfected and cleared down; on the 15th the facility was re-opened following the arrival of the first of several boatloads to reach Murcian shores in the last few days. The union representing the Guardía has expressed its unhappiness at the "continued waste of its resources" having to guard a privately owned hotel with open gardens which is used to quarantined the migrants, rather than housing them in the purpose built migrant transit centres to which irregular migrants are normally sent whilst the state attempts to repatriate them. The continued closure of the Moroccan and Algerian borders has made repatriation impossible during the covid crisis and this situation has continued, in spite of promises by the Government Delegate to the region that the centre would be re-opened, relieving the Guardia Civíl of a job which they should not be doing.

So it's a not very happy christmas for the officers who must spend the holiday guarding immigrants who will be released two weeks from now regardless and allowed to continue their journey into Europe as Spain cannot currently repatriate them.

Fishermen also unhappy

Normally at this time of year fishermen in the region are busy selling their most lucrative catch; red prawns, but this year fish counters are empty of prawns other than imported "white prawns". Águilas fishermen have said that the prawns have gone to deeper waters this year and are too deep for their nets to fish, whilst Cartagena fishermen have blamed the "maremotos" or the series of offshore seaquakes that have taken place off the coastline of Cabo de Palos in the last few weeks for disturbing the sediment on the bottom of the sea and sending their habitual red prawn catches off into other areas in which they are unable to fish! The result is that the few odd kilos of prawns which have been caught are fetching ridiculously high prices of over 100 euros a kilo, and sales of imported frozen prawns have gone up!

Fishermen have also been busy complaining that Spain's decision to accept cuts in fish quotas are "ruinous".

Brexit:

The announcement has just been made that the EU and UK have reached a trade deal so the exit from the EU will not be a "hard one".

Although there are UK nationals who live in Spain and voted to leave the EU, there are many who didn´t, and came to live here with no thought that their rights to live here and enjoy freedom of movement throughout Europe would ever be curtailed, so the last four years have been unsettling for them and there are still many people worried about what Brexit will bring. There will be a lot of changes next year because of Brexit, but there is a sense of relief that at least the exit will not be a "hard" exit ; certainly the last few days have highlighted all too clearly how difficult things can become when a neighbour decides to make life difficult.

It's impossible to know at this stage whether the new conditions under which UK nationals will be permitted to live in Spain will make it more difficult to retire to Spain and whether this, in turn, will affect all of us running businesses servicing English speaking residents and visitors, but at least we now have a clearer position from which to depart on this next stage of the journey.

In brief, from January 1st the following changes will apply:

- Travellers to Spain will have to:
- Ensure at least six months is left on a UK passport
- Ensure that travel insurance with health cover is contracted for ANY trips as the EHIC scheme will no longer apply.
- Free mobile roaming will end; so check with your mobile provider. At the moment there have been no confirmations that UK mobile firms will bring back roaming charges but the guarantee of free roaming ends.
- Check new conditions for pet travel; animal health certificates must be obtained from a vet 10 days before travel, as the current EU pet passport scheme is no longer valid
- Non-residents can only stay in Spain for a maximum of up to 90 days in any 180-day period.
- If you plan to move to the EU in 2021, you will no longer have an automatic right to live or work there and must be able to prove that you are financially capable of supporting yourself and your family.

And there are many other little changes which will undoubtedly start to rear their heads in the next few months as Spain implements its own way of monitoring our presence in Spain, ensuring that we have the correct driving licences, the correct ID documentation, are paying tax here etc etc.

And at this point, we would like to say a massive thank you to all of you who have supported Murcia Today through your subscription, and enabled us to continue giving information in English to the international community through what has been a turbulent and extremely difficult year. We're now stopping for a Christmas break and when the next bulletin comes out, the UK will have left the EU and the status of UK nationals living in Spain changed significantly.

Ursula von del Leyen maintained her stance that "together we still achieve more than we do apart" and  EU Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier said “today is a day of relief, but tinged by some sadness, as we compare what came before with what lies ahead”.

The British Government is obviously upbeat about the situation and says that "We have taken back control of every jot and tittle of our regulation in a way that is complete and unfettered."

Here is the government's statement: "Everything that the British public was promised during the 2016 referendum and in the general election last year is delivered by this deal."

"We have taken back control of our money, borders, laws, trade and our fishing waters

"The deal is fantastic news for families and businesses in every part of the UK.

"We have signed the first free trade agreement based on zero tariffs and zero quotas that has ever been achieved with the EU.

"The deal is the biggest bilateral trade deal signed by either side, covering trade worth £668bn in 2019.

"The deal also guarantees that we are no longer in the lunar pull of the EU, we are not bound by EU rules, there is no role for the European Court of Justice and all of our key red lines about returning sovereignty have been achieved.

"It means that we will have full political and economic independence on 1st January 2021."

"A points-based immigration system will put us in full control of who enters the UK and free movement will end.

"We have delivered this great deal for the entire United Kingdom in record time, and under extremely challenging conditions, which protects the integrity of our internal market and Northern Ireland’s place within it.

"We have got Brexit done and we can now take full advantage of the fantastic opportunities available to us as an independent trading nation, striking trade deals with other partners around the world."

So there you have it, the end of 2020, the year most of us will be very happy to forget. Have a good festive season, and we'll be back after Three Kings with the latest news and updates. And thank you again for your support.