Bars and restaurants in exchange for discos - that is, in summary, the new offer from the Ministry of Health that has been presented to all of the Regional Governments in Spain, after half, including the Canary Islands, rejected last week’s decree for restrictions on nightlife over the summer, and Madrid got judicial approval against the decree.
The new draft the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, which the press has had access to, does not make any mention of restrictions for the hospitality industry, i.e. bars, cafes, beach bars, and restaurants. And this is not a mistake. It is the concession of the Ministry of Health to leave the restrictions imposed on this sector in the hands of the regional Government dependent on their own epidemiological data.
This means that there will be no national limits on capacities, closing times, or spacing of tables, these will solely be implemented locally, in our case, by the Canary Islands Government under their own traffic light or alert level system, as now. There is an advantage with this, as the national order stated a maximum of 50% inside hospitality venues regardless of alert level, which has now been scrapped.
However, in return for this the central Government wants a national agreement on the closing time of nightlife establishments, i.e. clubs, discos, and fun pubs, of 3.00am at the latest. The proposal also establishes that nightlife establishments will be opened “when the epidemiological situation of the territorial unit of reference for the control of Covid-19 of the Autonomous Community in which the premises is located, is in alert level 1 or 2 only.” This means that it is not governed by incidence rates, but by alert level, and closing time of these venues will usually be at 2am, although in some cases it can be extended to 3am, and these measures to nightlife venues will be "subject to flexibility and review in line with the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic."
It is hoped that a new agreement can be made at the Inter-territorial Health Council meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) and a new decree updating last Saturday’s, can be published in the BOE.
