Date Published: 26/11/2020
ARCHIVED - Spanish Government places Christmas coronavirus restriction plan on hold for a week
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
The Spanish government postpones its recommendations as different regions suggest different approaches
Earlier this week the Spanish government outlined its provisional strategy regarding the restrictions to be placed on movement and social and family gatherings over the forthcoming festive season, detailing a slight relaxation of the rules and allowing regional governments to adapt the measures proposed according to the situation in each of the 17 Autonomous Communities, but the level of uncertainty regarding the details among all the administrative bodies concerned is so great that the recommendations have been put on hold for another week to allow further debate.
The Government has been criticised by some regional governments for announcing the provisional plans before representatives of each region had sat down together to discuss the proposals, as the inevitable opposition which is now occurring due to various regions not wishing to adopt the proposals in their current form will result in the plans changing again, leading to unnecessary confusion.
The advice outlined by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday was that family dinners on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve should be limited to a maximum of 6 people, but various regional governments have already stated their intention to raise that figure to 10 or to exclude children from the arithmetic. The 10-person limit has already been advocated by the governments of Madrid, Catalunya, Navarra and Murcia, for example, while on the other hand other administrations appear more cautious: the intention in Castilla y León, for instance, is to maintain the ban on travelling into and out of the region, contrary to the policies proposed by the national government.
Only Madrid and Catalunya have so far officially published alternative plans, with most governments preferring to await developments in the interim before committing themselves to any definite policies, but in the meantime Pedro Sánchez has defended the proposed limit of 6 people for family meals. This number, he maintains, was not chosen at random but was reached by a thorough analysis of how it is possible to continue controlling the spread of the pandemic: he targets an incidence rate of 25 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over a 14-day period, and with the rate currently standing at 341 it is clear that there is still a long way to go before this objective is even close to being achieved.
Meanwhile, very little is certain concerning what restrictions will be in place and in what regions over Christmas and the New Year. Madrid has stated categorically that no ban on inter-regional travel will be in force, adding that the prohibition proposed from 4th to 14th December will be the last of its kind, Galicia and Andalucía are requesting that children be treated differently in calculating the numbers, and almost all of the regional governments seem to be reluctant (understandably) to finalize plans until further data become available.
In this context the decision to postpone a final version of the national government’s recommendations until next week seems a prudent one, and at a meeting on Wednesday between the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, and representatives of the regional governments the talks barely touched on the matter of the festive season, focussing instead on the strategy for vaccination which will be adopted when vaccines first become available, a scenario which it is currently anticipated will occur in January.