Spanish politicians should have done Covid homework
Government and opposition have known the national state of alarm would run out this past weekend since they passed it last year.
"Neither I nor anyone else in Spain knows what is going to happen in the next few days", said the national coronavirus spokesman, Fernando Simón, at today's press conference, confirming that the next phase of the great national Covid expermient has begun. "I am even disappointed in myself, I have not been able to get the message across to the population or to the politicians", he complained, almost with a defeated tone, adding that he couldn't imagine what healthcare workers in hospitals must be thinking this week, after watching all the images on TV of young people partying in the early hours of Saturday morning in cities around the country. "Up until two days ago, I would have said we could expect the downwards trend observed in previous days to continue", he added.
"Freedom..!", shouted the people in the city squares in the videos, many without masks on, "bye-bye Covid!", "Spain is free!", "the state of alarm is over...!". Judges at regional high courts are clear about what to do but each in their own way. Some have ruled to accept new restrictions on group size, others have not; some have accepted limiting citizens' movements a bit, others have not; some have approved new curfews, others have not. Miquel Iceta, Spain's Territorial Policy Minister, said on Monday morning that the national government will support regional requests for regional Covid states of alarm. As we saw last week, case, hospital admission and vaccination numbers are very different around the country.
Spain has been here before. This is why the first state of alarm last March was passed and this why the second one, that has just ended, was passed. The pandemic affects the whole nation. The restriction of fundamental rights has been deemed necessary and the constitutional tool to do that is the state of alarm or exception, which must be approved by parliament. The government and the opposition and all of their advisors know this is how it works and that the state of alarm would run out on May 9 and that we would then have this problem again. Now they are moaning and blaming other parties and a generic irresponsible citizen because they haven't done their homework. If they had not been so obsessed by the bitter, divisive election campaign in Madrid, they would have had time to debate, reach agreements and legislate. Now more people will suffer.
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