Thousands of Catalans go back to lockdown
Some 160,000 persons in the Spanish region of Catalonia went back into confinement on Wednesday as authorities scrambled to control a brand new surge of coronavirus infections in the area, just weeks after a nationwide lockdown was lifted.
And a judge approved the regional government's stay-at-home order for residents of the Lleida area, about 180 km (110 miles) west of Barcelona, tensions rose over the way to handle an increase in cases in a suburb of the Catalan capital.
Tourism-dependent Spain, among Europe's hardest-hit countries with an increase of than 28,000 deaths from the pandemic, brought a tough national lockdown to a finish on June 21. Since that time, more than 170 clusters have sprung up, prompting regional authorities to impose a patchwork of local restrictions, confusing locals and angering businesses.
Tensions are in their highest in Catalonia as the wealthy north-eastern region of 7.5 million people is seeing the largest number of new cases. Also, an acrimonious push for Catalonia's independence in recent years has kept relations strained between its separatist leaders and the central government in Madrid. "
The utmost priority of (the Catalan) government is people's health and life and there cannot be any judicial interference that complicates the collective fight the pandemic," Quim Torra's regional government said in a statement.
The statement urged persons to comply with all the measures it had announced on Tuesday, including a restriction on gatherings of more than 10 persons in three neighborhoods of L'Hospitalet, a Barcelona suburb that's home to around 260,000, despite the fact that another judge struck down that measure overnight.
Such restrictions must be approved by a judge, and the Catalan government said it could appeal against the ruling. The limit on gatherings is part of an answer asking residents in those areas in L'Hospitalet to remain home, though the limit isn't mandatory there.
Barcelona's mayor Ada Colau told local channel TV3 she was concerned about the coronavirus outbreaks and said a "small step backwards" might be needed, but she stopped short of announcing a lockdown or any other measures for Barcelona, which is Spain's second-largest city and probably the most popular with tourists.
While Catalonia, Spain's second-most populous region, is the first to come back its citizens to home confinement, parts of Galicia have already been sealed off to visitors and a Basque town imposed a curfew to tackle their own outbreaks.
