As the Ministry of Health in each of the autonomous communities continues to ease restrictions on both hospitality and mobility, all thoughts now turn to Easter, as the country tries to further relieve the lockdown, while ensuring that it avoids a fourth wave after religious holiday.
What we do not want is for the authorities to make the same mistakes that we saw over Christmas and Three Kings, mistakes that sparked the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in a further 20,000 deaths in the first 2 months of the year.
That mistake by the President of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, and his entourage of so called ‘experts’, proved exceptionally damaging to residents of the Costa Blanca, where, during phases one and two of the pandemic, the cost in infections and deaths had been fairly light.
We all appreciate how seriously the festival is considered to be in Spain and the importance paid to it by a large proportion of the population, but what we don’t want to see are the vast hoards of city dwellers arriving from all points west in less than 5 weeks time, and neither the processions that generate crowds of tens of thousands of people onto our local streets.
Let us all hope that the politicians have all learned their lessons following their mishandling of the pandemic earlier in the year, and for the sake of just one more 4 day fiesta they do the sensible thing; cancel the Easter celebrations and keep our community border closed and our people safe.
Just down the road on the Costa Calida, Murcia’s regional government is opposed to permitting travel into and out of the Region. The Health Minister said that he is not keen to open regional boundaries. Such travel was permitted at Christmas and now, with the benefit if of hindsight, it can be seen that this was a mistake, contributing to the severity of the third wave of infection.
Hope he is listening or reading this!!!!!!!!!1