ARCHIVED - Still no consensus reached on relaxing facemask wearing law in Spain
Cautious regional governments advocate waiting for further Covid improvements: the matter will be discussed again next week
In many parts of Spain impatience is growing as the temperatures warm up and people become anxious to see a relaxation in the anti-pandemic rules concerning the obligatory wearing of facemasks in public places, but the latest meeting of the inter-territorial public health committee, in which all 17 regional governments are represented, resulted in no concrete target date being set.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has indicated that the removal of facemasks in public will become possible “soon” as the Covid pandemic eases, but at Wednesday’s meeting the regions of Spain were almost evenly divided over the issue, agreeing only to raise the matter again next week.
On the one hand, Catalunya, the Comunidad Valenciana, Murcia, Castilla-La Mancha, Galicia, Madrid, Aragón and the Balearics are all in favor of relaxing the rules at the end of June or in the first week of July, although Juan José Pedreño, the Murcia Health minister, recognizes that the change would have to be universal throughout Spain.
Opposed to this view, though, are the Basque Country, Navarra, Extremadura, Castilla y León, Andalucía and Cantabria, where the feeling is that to relax the rules now would be premature, and that a little more patience is required until either 50 per cent of the population are fully vaccinated against coronavirus or the national 14-day incidence rate drops below 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.