Pedro Sánchez rules out another state of alarm despite increase in cases in all of Spain

The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, said yesterday that there will not be another state of alarm to combat the fifth wave of the coronavirus in Spain, despite the fact that the incidence continues to grow in all territories, and despite the fact that the courts continue to issue contradictory rulings on the restrictions agreed by the regional Governments, especially for a curfew.

Yesterday the central Government rejected the re-approval of a new decree to activate the exception regulations, just hours after the president of the Basque Country formally requested them to resume the limitations of night mobility and to make the use of masks mandatory again in open spaces throughout the whole of Spain.

The spokeswoman for the Government, Isabel Rodríguez, said “The Government believes that there is scope for the communities to implement measures to contain the contagions at a regional level. That is the framework in which we believe we have to move, and not at a national level.”

The Basque regional government was the first to formally and personally address Sánchez to ask him for a mechanism to activate the curfew again, after being rejected by the Constitutional Court, who avoided referring to declaring a third state of alarm, which is the only legal mechanism that allows the regional Governments to decree restrictions such as curfews, limitations in social meetings or regional perimeter restrictions without involving their respective superior courts of justice.

Without the protection of this latest state of alarm, the Valencian Community, Catalonia and Cantabria have obtained the green light from their Supreme Court for curfews, while in the Canary Islands, Extremadura and Navarra have been rejected by the courts.

The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra (TSJN) denied the curfew requested by the Provincial Government between 1am and 6am for municipalities at very high risk from Covid, despite being one of the communities most affected by this fifth wave.

The confusion caused by this new avalanche of judicial conflicts will once again involve the Supreme Court, as yesterday the Canarian Government, making use of the express reform approved by the Executive of Sánchez to try to avoid precisely this legal mess, asked the high court to rule on the legality of curfews limited to high incidence areas.

It will be the first time that the Supreme Court has manifested itself on the legality of this measure after last week's ruling of the Constitutional Court. However, in June, the high court already settled, in a ruling that overturned the curfews in the Balearic Islands, that the Organic Law of Special Measures in Public Health Matters of 1986, which is the regulation to which all the Autonomies that have imposed restrictions after the end of the alarm, would allow certain limitations of fundamental rights, but never in a massive and indiscriminate way.