Tenerife Cabildo wants restrictions softened for bars and restaurants next week

The president of the Tenerife Cabildo, Pedro Martín, will ask the regional government during the next Governing Council meeting on Thursday, to make the measures imposed on the hospitality industry more flexible now that the festive period has finished. Bars and restaurants are one of the subsectors most affected by the restrictions on the island, especially by prohibiting the use of their interiors.

The Government has just extended restrictions for 14 more days, as published in the Boletin Oficial (BOC) today, but they are revisable every Thursday until lifted. Martín says that in his opinion, they made some sense during the Christmas holidays when there were many family and social encounters with friends, but thinks that now the sector has shown they comply with regulations, they should be able to have “some flexibility on capacities so that they can face the next few months after the setbacks over the winter season."

“This does not mean that their guard will be lowered. But it is necessary to do it, to help a sector that has been badly punished in recent weeks”, he explained. “As the Cabildo, we asked the Government to maintain the Crafts Fair so that the sector could be reactivated and they denied it for fear of rebounding. We have to be cautious, but we also now have to think about reactivating the island's economy.”

Likewise, Martín announced that in the next few weeks he will study the implementation of an aid plan with the Government for the hospitality and commercial sector. "The Cabildo has already started aid, but we want to expand it with the collaboration of the Government," he said.

While this is taking place, business owners in the leisure and hospitality sector, are “desperately waiting” for the package of direct aid that the regional government promised them in order to survive during the coming months.

It must be remembered that these sectors, along with tourism, are being the most punished by the health measures imposed by the Government to contain infections on the island of Tenerife. The extension of these measures for two more weeks in Tenerife is a slap in the face for the sector, which in addition, have had to close terraces due to bad weather from storm Filomena.

The vice president of the Association of Restaurants and Leisure Entrepreneurs in Santa Cruz (AERO), Carlos Quintero, pointed out that these days have been "very hard" for the sector, but insisted that "we all have to row in the same direction, and if we do, in the end the numbers of contagions will end up reducing and we will reach the objective.”

Quintero hopes, as we all do, that by next Thursday when the Governing Council meets again, the numbers on the island will have dropped enough to go to Level 2. “It is urgent that direct aid comes out to the sectors that have suffered the most these last 10 months from the health crisis, and that will continue to suffer from it. The government has promised us that they will come out in a matter of weeks,” he declared.