The Spanish government will ask the country’s parliament for a month-long extension to the state of emergency in the country, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Saturday.
“The Spanish government will ask the Parliament a new extension to the state of emergency, which will have distinct characteristics, in relation to the previous ones, because the situation in Spain has changed,” Sanchez said. “To begin with, it aims to be the last [extension to the] state of emergency and to encompass, until the end of the de-escalation, and because of that we will ask parliament that instead of 15 days, that it is of around a month.”
The prime minister said with this, that right of free circulation would remain “limited” for a few more weeks and that certain regions could exit the state of emergency earlier than others.
Sanchez also said the phased easing of restrictions would carry on in half the country until the beginning of summer, while the rest of the country would finish one or two weeks afterwards, if there isn’t an increase in the number of cases.
On tourism: The prime minister also addressed the economic situation, specifically the tourism sector, which according to Sanchez, accounts for 12.3% of the country’s GDP and employs 2.6 million people.
“This sector depends on the more than 80 million visitors that we receive every year and consequently Spain needs tourism and without tourism we cannot talk about an economic reactivation,” Sanchez said, explaining that Spain should not rush to open up to tourists. “We need to fully overcome the health emergency as soon as possible to then relaunch our attractive touristic offer.”
