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Date Published: 01/06/2020
ARCHIVED - Movement between regions may be possible from June 8th
On Wednesday parliament will debate a further extension of the state of emergency until 21st June
At the weekend Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez confirmed his intention to seek a further extension of the state of alarm until midnight on 21st June as had been expected.
This will be debated in the Congress of Deputies on Wednesday this week, one of the central themes being inter-provincial movement.
On Sunday the PM held his weekly videoconference with the presidents of the 17 autonomous regions of Spain, during which he explained that this final extension would be "very different" to the others but was absolutely "necessary" to complete the process of de-escalation of the coronavirus.
During this final phase the regional governments will have much greater control over their own individual territories and should the extension be granted as the PM hopes, then the intention is to permit each regional president moving into phase 3 to make the decision about when his/her region passes from phase 3 to the “new normal”.
They will also have the power to decide for themselves when the state of emergency is finally lifted within their own region, as well as decide how long their region remains in phase three.
The Prime Minister is calling this a transition from "co-governance" to "full governance" of the autonomous communities, a gradual process to return decision-making back to the regional governments as the state of emergency comes to an end.
The biggest question which must be answered relates to the point at which residents of one region will be permitted to move to another.
Since the first de-escalation plans were presented the intention of the Government has always been that the movement of residents within Spain would be the final golden apple everyone has been aiming for, and those from internal areas would be permitted to take holidays on the coast and move around the country freely again, the target date being the 22nd June. After this date it would be impossible to prevent free movement as loss of the state of enmergency removes the temporary powers which permit the central government to control local and regional police forces from Madrid and enforce a movement restriction.
However, intense pressure has been applied by some areas of the country to open up earlier and some sectors, such as the tourist sector, which has been very badly hit, has been campaigning for areas with lower levels of Covid cases to be permitted to open up sooner in order to re-activate the tourist sector.
On Monday afternoon it was announced that the Government is “studying” the possibility of permitting regions moving into phase 3 to make that decision for themselves earlier, that is to say, from the day they enter phase 3.
It has been calculated that should the de-escalation plan continue as intended then 47% percent of the country, around 22 million people, could be permitted to move to selected areas from Monday 8th June next week.
However, there are concerns in some quarters, Murcia being one of them, as our regional authority has to juggle the need to create opportunities for regional businesses working in the tourist sector against the fear that those coming in to the region may bring further cases of Covid with them.
The President of the Region of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, has questioned the practicalities of how this could possibly work, his concern, logically, being the large number of families from Madrid, one of the worst affected areas of Spain which is behind much of the rest of the country in its de-escalation, who own holiday property in the region and will undoubtedly be keen to come here.
Murcia was the first area of Spain to lock down its coastal areas on the day after schools were closed to prevent the spread of the virus and has managed to maintain the lowest number of cases and deaths in mainland Spain throughout the crisis, so it’s logical that the regional president should be wary of how the roads and accesses in and out of the various regions will be controlled.
Throughout the crisis a small number of families from outside of the region have managed to slip in and arrive at their holiday homes, usually in the middle of the night, undetected other than by other residents when they appear in the morning to seek provisions.
This trickle could become a wave should controls not be mounted to prevent them; how this will function when the army and police are still controlled by the national government is the concern of the Murcian government.
Although the plan is for residents of areas in phase 3 to be able to move to other areas also in phase 3, the question of how to prevent those still in phase 2 from moving as well is paramount.
Discussion will continue about the topic during the weekly videoconference of regional health ministers tonight and ahead of the debate on Wednesday.
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