New lockdown measures come into force today in parts of Spain after marker date passes

As the marker date set in Spain of Friday 18th September by government ministers passes, after assessment of the current pandemic certain parts of the country re-enter lockdown conditions.

Ministers in Spain several months ago earmarked Friday, September the 18th as the date to assess the second wave of Coronavirus infections and had many different plans in place.

Some of those plans were brought forward as some regions detracted from the 3 phase plan with some regions going back to phase 2 and some phase 1 for certain periods as infections grew.

As the date arrived, all regions were considered not to be in a serious enough position to have extreme measures applied whilst more highly infected areas have.

850,000 people in Spain’s capital city Madrid, will be placed under new, tougher lockdown restrictions from today.

37 districts are included in the lockdown rules, as cases have soared to more than 1,000 people 100,000 people.

The new lockdown regulations saw protests over the weekend ahead of the new regulations coming into play.

There have been more than 640,000 cases of coronavirus in Spain and 30,495 deaths since the start of the pandemic, giving Spain the highest number of cases in Europe.

20,000 of those cases have come since the start of September.

The city of Madrid counts for a third of all cases and deaths.

The new regulations will stop people leaving their zone, ban gatherings of more than six people and introduce a 10 pm curfew for public spaces, parks and businesses.

It though becomes a light relief for many in Spain as the fear was that if the infections had been worse and they were spiralling at stages and still continue to do so in some regions – that they too would re-enter lockdown conditions, although ministers clearly thought those regions had done enough to contain the deadly virus without having to revert to harder pre-laid planning.

One of the measures set upon the residents of Madrid is that they can no longer travel which amongst many residents of other regions of Spain believe is one of the largest reasons other regions such as the Costa del Sol & Costa Blanca in Spain are seeing the second wave of Coronavirus.

Many residents in Madrid headed to their holiday homes on the coasts throughout the summer months and risked taking the virus with them and as they did in Summer the numbers rose.

“It was always going to happen when people from Madrid were allowed to travel again, we saw it before earlier in the year before the State Of Emergency,” said Karl Rowbottom in Benalmadena,

” This area this summer saw more people from Madrid than ever before, in my opinion, it should not have been allowed to happen but I guess the Spanish government felt they couldn’t effectively cancel summer holidays for nationals,” he said.

” It looks like we have escaped further restrictions for now at least, hopefully stopping the city dwellers from travelling down her will reduce the infection rate” he finished.

Another resident Tommy Taylor, in Fuengirola, just 10 minutes away from the holiday resort of Benalmadena held his own concerns as he said:

” My worry now is that last time we all got locked down it followed what took place in Madrid at first and other area’s followed, although that shouldn’t really happen here as there is nobody about- I’ve never seen the town so quiet and from what I can see all regulations and guidelines are being followed – we should be ok hopefully this time, but this is Spain and anything can happen”

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