PM calls time on measure
Announcement criticised by regional government for being ‘too early’
Emergency legislation set to end next month
THE GOVERNMENT is planning to end the state of emergency (estado de alarma) in Spain on May 9 – when the current stage runs its course.
In response to questions from journalists on Tuesday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said this was the ‘goal’ of his executive.
“Our objective is… that it would not be necessary to extend the state of emergency,” he said. “We want May 9 to be the endpoint – this is our intention and this is what we are working towards.”
The pandemic would then be managed via the ‘inter-regional committee’, which is made up of health councillors from each of the regions and minister for health, Carolina Darias.
Sr Sánchez reminded that this committee has been meeting regularly throughout the healthcare crisis – and they would continue to respond to any new outbreaks of Covid-19, as well as
managing process.
The announcement has been criticised by the regional government of Andalucía. Councillor for the interior, Elías Bendodo said it the vaccination
was too early for the national government to make such a call – and claimed it had more to do with politics than health.
He claimed that the government may not be able to win enough support in Parliament to extend the state of emergency.
“We do not know how the fourth wave of coronavirus is going to evolve,” he added.
“We should be looking at things on a week-by-week basis to see if we can relax the measures.”
Sr Sánchez stated that he believed that all the agreements reached in the interregional committee would be validated by the judiciary.
Therefore this committee would have ‘sufficient tools’ at its disposal to continue responding to the challenges of the pandemic.
Sr Sánchez recognised that two of the current measures being used to reduce Covid-19 infections – the night-time curfew and regional border closures – were covered by the state of emergency legislation.
According to state news agency EFE, these restrictions on movement would come to an end if the state of emergency legislation is not in force.
However, regional governments would be able to bring in restrictions ‘for public health reasons’ which do not affect fundamental rights.