To curb this second wave of corona virus cases, the Spanish government on Sunday declared a national state of emergency, that includes an overnight curfew, except the Canary Islands. The new state of emergency will last until early May next year, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a televised speech.
Since the outbreak of the corona virus pandemic, one of the worst affected country in the World, Spain is seeing a new surge of Covid-19 cases.
To curb this second wave, the Spanish government on Sunday declared a national state of emergency, that includes an overnight curfew, except the Canary Islands. The new state of emergency will last until early May next year, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a televised speech. 'The situation we are going through is extreme,' Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez stressed.
The measures were agreed earlier Sunday at a two-and-a-half-hour cabinet meeting convened following calls from Spanish regions for the power to impose curfews themselves.
A government statement said the overnight curfew would run from 11pm-6am nationwide. Meanwhile, regional leaders will have authority to close regional borders and limit gatherings to six people for those who don't live together.
While the state of emergency would initially last for just 15 days, the government planned to ask parliament to extend it for six months, the statement added. The country of 47 million inhabitants, Spain is already dealing to avoid another heavy blow to an economy, that the pandemic has plunged into recession and destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Sanchez nonetheless said that if conditions allowed, the measures could be lifted earlier than anticipated. 'The state of emergency is the most effective tool to lower the rate of infection,' he argued.
The curfew does not apply to Spain's Canary Islands, which were recently removed from Britain's and Germany's list of unsafe travel destinations due to the favorable trajectory of the virus on the archipelago.
On Wednesday, Spain became the first European country to record more than a million cases of the virus, and almost 35,000 people have died from it.
Under the state of emergency, the regions would have the power to limit movement in and out of their territories, and could also extend the curfew by an hour on either end depending on local conditions.
Spain was locked down during an initial state of emergency that lasted from March 15 to June 21, and the measures were among the strictest in the entire Europe.
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