The coronavirus crisis has given rise to unpublished images in the last decades of Barcelona: places frequented by tourism now appear semi-empty, available to citizens, children play near the Cathedral without the need to squeeze, the photos seem from another era . But not on the beaches. The beaches get crowded despite the fact that tourists have not been able to get on planes and cruise ships en masse.
In view of the distance to which the prevention of covid-19 contagion requires, the city council installed a system to control the capacity of the beaches and cordoned off them. He made available to Barcelona residents a website that reports on the capacity of the different parts of the coast of the Catalan capital, as well as security guards and information on panels and on the public address system. But the matter will not end there.
La Guardia Urbana, on the beach
This Monday, the Deputy Mayor for Prevention and Security, Albert Batlle, has stated that if it is necessary because the capacity overflows, the consistory will go one step further and vacate the beaches. Barcelona has already had to do it twice this month. The first on June 23, to prevent the Sant Joan festival from culminating in a massive party with minimal distances. The second was this Saturday, June 27, when the Barceloneta was overfilled during the Pride celebration.
Batlle has presented the commissioning of the group of beaches of the Urban Guard, which, like every year, will focus on controlling the activities of the coast and its surroundings. It is a team that is formed every year and has been activated since June 22. It is made up of 80 agents and 10 managers, who are facing a different task for the first time: “This year they had an unimaginable objective a few months ago, the surveillance of health security.”
The agents will be in charge, if the case arises, to proceed to partial or total closings of beaches, and also to control that the accumulation of people in the sand is not concentrated in the immediate strip of land in case of eviction. The members of the group of beaches patrol on foot, on scooters, cars, bicycles, quads and on two semi-rigid boats. All this, to control the beaches and groynes.
His work is varied, and goes from the logical surveillance of crimes to provide a kit consisting of clothes, flip flops and a metro card to bathers who are robbed on the beach. But, as Batlle stresses, this summer they will have an unprecedented task: preventing citizens from getting too close to each other.
Regrowth risk
In the context of the health crisis, paradoxes are not lacking, and one of the most evident is that people who have been confined for months and wearing a mask for any outing, lie on the sand surrounded by hundreds of bathers, forming an agglomeration that poses a risk to what is most feared now of the coronavirus: outbreaks. On June 17, Antoni Trilla, head of the Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology Service at Hospital Clínic, spoke of the risk of this happening and of the influence that bathers may have.
Speaking to this newspaper about the first crowds of the season on the beaches of Barcelona, Trilla rebuked his attitude to what he qualified as the “percentage of unconscious” that stimulate the risk of contagion. “The message is simple and it is always the same: distance, mask and hand washing. We have been crushing with the same for months. But we will continue the same until the message has not penetrated,” added the epidemiologist.
Batlle and his future
During the presentation, Batlle was questioned as a result of the possibility that he will end up taking the step and present himself as a candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat in a candidacy still to be defined that would result from the entente between the Partit Nacionalista Català of the former PDECat leader Marta Pascal and Units per Avançar, a party that presented itself with the PSC in the last autonomous communities, consisting of former members of Unió and of which the Deputy Mayor, who was previously a socialist activist, is a leader.
The question came to mind because after Batlle showed himself available to lead that hypothetical candidacy, the head of the ranks of the socialists in the consistory and first deputy mayor, Jaume Collboni, warned him days ago that “it is not compatible” who is a candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat and has responsibilities at the Barcelona City Council.
This Monday, Batlle has contradicted Collboni, considering that he can have one foot in the consistory and the other in the Catalan Chamber and in defending that people are allowed to “do more than one activity”: “My priority is the city of Barcelona, but there are councilors who have more than one responsibility and are, in addition, deputies in the Parliament. I feel very comfortable with the function that I am doing and I do not think it is incompatible ”.
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