Sánchez approves a new state of alarm for all of Spain with the intention of extending it until May 9

The extraordinary Council of Ministers this Sunday has approved a new state of alarm for all Spain with a duration of 15 days, although the intention is that it can be extended for the next six months, until May 9, if Congress supports it.

The measures came into force at 6:24 p.m. when Royal Decree 926/2020 was published in the

Gazette (BOE).

The text marks a mandatory curfew for the entire country from eleven at night to six in the morning.

Communities are also given the possibility to restrict entry and exit from their territory, except for justifiable reasons, but it is a decision that is left to their presidents.

This allows, for example, that communities can close their borders if they have a very affected close autonomy, something that has been raised on occasion in those that are close to Madrid, but that until now could not be done.

Night confinement is mandatory for the next 15 days.

After those two weeks, as of November 9, the curfew will no longer be mandatory throughout the territory and its possible extension will be left to the regional presidents.

The Government leaves the main decisions in the hands of the autonomies, a political bet that was taken in June and that is being maintained now, something that many of them demanded.

In fact, the authority delegated in the application of the state of alarm remains in the hands of the regional presidents, who may advance or delay the curfew by one hour, but not eliminate it.

Madrid, for example, wanted to go at 00.00, something that the decree allows.

The co-governance body that will direct the crisis will be the inter-territorial health council, which usually meets on Wednesdays.

Spain does not close the borders and marks exceptions for the curfew for the Canary Islands, one of the communities with the best data, to save tourism as much as possible.

“All of Europe is already taking measures to limit mobility.

The situation we are living in is extreme, ”said the president, Pedro Sánchez, to justify this decision.

The president has requested "overwhelming parliamentary support" for this measure, thus putting pressure on the PP.

Sánchez has announced that he has called Pablo Casado, leader of the PP, to communicate these measures and ask for his support.

The government also contacted other groups to ensure the success of the vote.

Sánchez wants the extension to be voted on immediately, without waiting 15 days.

The request will be approved in the ordinary Council of Ministers on Tuesday to vote on the same Thursday in Congress.

The government should have no problem voting.

Ciudadanos has already offered him their votes;

The PNV agrees because the Basque Country was the first community to request a state of alarm on Friday - with the authority delegated to the Lehendakari, which has been made clear -;

and Catalonia has also requested it, so it should have the votes of ERC and JxCAT.

However, the Government insists a lot on obtaining the support of the PP, which governs in five autonomies, including Madrid: the one that has been most reluctant to apply a state of alarm again.

The PP assures that Casado will give his opinion on this matter tomorrow, Monday.

The goal is to reach 25 infected per 100,000 inhabitants, the president explained.

Now Spain is at 368, he noted.

"We have a long journey ahead of us, we are going to have to deploy a great endurance exercise," he insisted after clarifying that the 6-month period is not fixed if the data improves.

The president has also guaranteed that there will be a rendering of accounts every two weeks although the extension will not be voted every 15 days as in April and May.

The Government has already indirectly admitted that it was a mistake not to extend the alarm in June, but it justifies it in that pressure from other political groups, especially the PP but also from allies such as ERC, made it unviable in parliament.

Spain thus returns to a state of alarm seven months after the Council of Ministers of March 14 that decreed it to stop the first wave of the pandemic.

And it will do it this time for a long time if the Government's plans are fulfilled.

It was then the second time in a democracy that this extraordinary instrument was used, provided for in article 116 of the Constitution.

Now it is the fourth, since it has also been used in a specific way to be able to close Madrid.

However, this state of alarm will not be like that of March, but softer, and with the intention that Congress will extend it for six months, until next May.

Another difference with that of March is that the Government sets out directly in its decree the will that the state of alarm last six months.

The Government can only approve it for now for 15 days, but the text of the decree already includes the need to extend it in Congress for six months.

The Executive does not want to repeat the parliamentary hell of the spring, with agonizing votes every two weeks, so this time it proposes a long extension at once and trusts that it has enough parliamentary support for Spain to be like Italy or France, two countries where nobody discuss the legal instrument because it is approved for several months.

In Italy it has been in force since the start of the pandemic and has been renewed twice without problems.

The Government has thought of a different state of alarm also in legal terms.

The Government has worked so that the authority delegated in the application of the state of alarm and to implement the night confinement falls this time in the autonomic presidents, who have demanded it in several cases.

This will allow the autonomies to make their own decisions and respect the political principle, agreed in June, that they are the ones who manage the bulk of the crisis from the de-escalation of the first wave.

The government has no intention of returning to the total lockdown of March and the almost absolute economic standstill.

But it does believe, like the vast majority of the autonomies, that a night confinement - which implies preventing mobility from a certain time at night except in justified cases and with police control of the streets - can reduce infections.

More than 30% of them are taking place in social gatherings in houses.

All the regional governments are detecting that closing the bars at one hour is not enough, because many people, especially the youngest but not only, follow the meetings in the houses until the wee hours.

Prolonged contact in closed spaces without ventilation exponentially increases the risk of contagion.

That is why almost the majority of governments agree to have an instrument that allows the police to monitor the streets at night and thus make these meetings very difficult.

House-to-house control is much more difficult, so the formula of controlling movement in the streets is assumed to be more effective.

Total confinement is not on the table at the moment, and in fact this state of alarm is raised to avoid reaching that extreme situation with the obvious destruction that it causes.

The five communities governed by the Popular Party have so far resisted giving explicit support to the state of alarm.

Two socialists (Aragon and the Canary Islands) have not requested it, but they support it.

The remaining 10 (Basque Country, Asturias, Extremadura, La Rioja, Catalonia, Navarra, Cantabria, Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha and the Balearic Islands) have requested it in writing between Friday and Saturday.

There are socialist, regionalist, nationalist and citizen governments, in the case of Melilla, who have also officially requested this constitutional rule to limit rights and contain the virus.

The Government had planned to approve this state of alarm in the ordinary Council of Ministers on Tuesday, after maturing it politically with the autonomies, which on Thursday discussed this matter extensively at the meeting of the inter-territorial health, with all the councilors present.

But the decision has been rushed to this Sunday, even before tomorrow's conference of presidents, due to the cascading request of several autonomous communities on Friday.

The first was the Basque Country.

The Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, took a step forward after the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country struck down restrictions on social gatherings that he wanted to impose on the community.

Behind Euskadi were all the others.

The only real political problem is Madrid, because according to several councilors the other autonomies, including those of the PP, were in the inter-territorial area in favor of the night confinement and did not openly reject the state of alarm.

If the scale approved in the interterritorial is applied to the average data of the autonomous communities, seven communities would have already exceeded the maximum alert threshold: Aragon, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Madrid, Catalonia, Navarra and La Rioja, in addition from the cities of Ceuta and Melilla.

Faith of errors

In an earlier version of this information it was said that the new alarm decree prohibited travel from one community to another.

The decree allows the autonomies to establish limits to movement between communities, but does not oblige them to do so.