Nearly 25,000 people took part in an outdoor party to mark the start of the school year in a university in Madrid, without respecting anti-Covid instructions, police said on Saturday, admitting to having been taken aback.
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According to Spanish media, this is the largest such gathering since the start of the pandemic, when outdoor gatherings were banned. "
There were thousands of people on the campus of Complutense University, about 25,000
" in the night from Friday to Saturday, explained in a statement the municipal police, specifying that the event seems to have been organized via WhatsApp.
Images posted on social media show a compact crowd of young people drinking and dancing, almost without any masks.
"
Without prior warning from the university, nor time to prepare for an adequate operation, dispersing a gathering of some 25,000 people is an almost impossible task
," police said, adding that they did not arrive until after midnight.
Supported by drones and remaining on campus until dawn, the police therefore contented themselves with maintaining calm and avoiding any serious incident, especially on the access roads and in public transport.
On weekends, the Madrid police regularly deploy 200 additional agents to disperse the evenings of open-air drinking, known as “
botellones
”.
A similar rally took place the same night in Barcelona, where around 8,000 young people took part in a party on the campus of the city's autonomous university, the rector told Catalan radio RAC1.
Although Spain has lifted a slew of anti-Covid restrictions, people still need to wear a mask outdoors if they are unable to be at least 5 feet (5 feet) from those around them.
And large gatherings remain prohibited, although the number of participants varies from region to region.
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But some people have let their guard down, due to the rapid pace of the vaccination campaign, with more than three-quarters of the country's 47 million people now fully vaccinated.
Despite a new wave of infections this summer due to the Delta variant, the number of new cases has continued to decline.
The national incidence rate, 91 cases per 100,000 people, is the lowest for more than a year.
According to the latest figures released on Friday, Spain has registered 3,222 new cases and 44 deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of infections since the start of the pandemic to 4,929,546 and the number of deaths to 85,783.