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The autonomous communities have stepped on the accelerator of the de-escalation and the so-called new normality is at the gates. Only the Community of Madrid, which on Wednesday gave up requesting entry into phase 3 on Monday, and, predictably, Lleida and Barcelona, which have not asked to advance either – although the Generalitat does not rule it out – will continue the pace of mistrust marked by government. The other territories in phase 2 (Castilla y León, the Valencian Community, Ceuta and the Castilian-Manchegas provinces of Toledo, Ciudad Real and Albacete) have already claimed access to the last rung of the de-escalation and Galicia, which entered phase 3 on Monday, studies end the alarm state next week.
Madrid has been the last to speak. The Vice President of the Community, Ignacio Aguado, has revealed that they will not ask for a pass to phase 3, the last stage of the de-escalation that allows the bar to be used in bars, more capacity in shops and the opening of cinemas, theaters and auditoriums . “The possibility of moving to phase 3 has not been considered because from June 21, if everything goes according to plan, the alarm state will decline and with it the phase system will decline,” he justified. The community has also refused to request relief measures for phase 2.
Catalonia, for its part, has requested, for now, that only the health regions of Central Catalonia and Girona go to phase 3. Lleida, Barcelona and its metropolitan area would, predictably, remain in stage 2, although the counselor for Salud, Alba Vergés, has said that “nothing is ruled out.” The deadline for submitting phase change requests ended this Wednesday, but a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health clarified that this is “a flexible process.”
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The Valencian Community also asked the ministry on Tuesday to go to phase 3 and start external mobility with the Region of Murcia and the Balearic Islands and, later, with Castilla-La Mancha and Aragón. The Valencian Executive also plans to allow mobility between its provinces.
Castilla y León has also stepped on the accelerator and aspires to phase 3 on Monday. The Minister of Health, Verónica Casado, explained that the data supports the proposal and, after the prudent steps of the first stages, they are now betting on “taking a little risk” and speeding up the de-escalation. Likewise, Castilla-La Mancha has requested that Toledo, Ciudad Real and Albacete go to phase 3 and Ceuta, which stopped the de-escalation after detecting outbreaks, has also requested to advance to the last step of the lack of control.
With what they have called a new normality a step away and the end of the state of alarm (June 21) very close, Galicia takes the lead to finish the de-escalation. In the middle of the electoral campaign and with the track smoothed for the race to the polls by some very favorable, the president of the Xunta, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has announced that the autonomous government will decide on Friday whether to leave the state from Monday of next week alarm. Feijóo trusts its purpose to the “contagion rate of the last seven days”, which stands at 0.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, as he explains, the lowest in Spain, where the average is 4.2. The data provided by the Galician Health Service (Sergas) maintain that currently there are only 10 patients hospitalized for coronavirus, none of them in the ICU. The active cases in the community, according to the Xunta, are 476, compared to 10,338 people cured.
“We have been the autonomous community with the lowest contagion rate in Spain for more than seven days,” stressed the Galician president. “That makes us harbor founded hopes that next Friday”, if the data collected this Wednesday and Thursday do not distort the situation, “we will void the state of alarm,” he explained.
Núñez Feijóo, who will propose the measure “as the government’s delegated authority”, recalled that, although the state of alarm is “annulled” and on Monday it enters “a normal social and economic situation”, “some precautions will continue from the health point of view ”.
Mobility between northern areas
All the communities in northern Spain are already in phase 3 and the autonomous governments are committed to allowing mobility between provinces. Thus, on mobility between the Basque Country and Cantabria, the Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, said this Wednesday that he hopes that next Monday traffic between the two communities can be allowed, but he has assured that he will analyze “all the data” so that this circulation of people “cannot generate an unwanted situation in any other community”. Urkullu has indicated that he had held “several conversations” with the president of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla, and both had stated at the presidents’ conference last Sunday that, “if circumstances allow, on Monday they could” make mobility possible “between the two regions, since both are in phase 3.
Galicia had also been in favor of opening mobility with Asturias. The Government Council of the Principality will debate this Thursday the possibility of requesting authorization from the Government so that from next Monday, June 15, it is possible to travel to Cantabria and Galicia.
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