schema:articleBody
| - Spanish police deployed Friday at Madrid's airport and train stations to ensure that people respected an inter-regional lockdown to reduce holiday weekend travel and slow the spread of the coronavirus. Most of Spain's 17 regions have announced some form of border closures this week after the government declared a state of emergency Sunday, giving them the legal tools to close their borders to anyone moving without just cause. Across Europe, governments have been enforcing increasingly strict measures to limit mobility, with France imposing a new lockdown and many nations closing bars and restaurants as cases spiral higher. The northwestern Galicia region became the latest to impose geographic restrictions on its seven largest cities, leaving sparsely-populated Extremadura as the only mainland area yet to do so, along with the Canary Islands. Although most areas will keep the measure in place for two weeks, authorities in Madrid have only imposed the closure for the next two weekends, both three-day holidays. Ahead of the closure, there was "an increased number of departures" from the capital, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said, insisting the police had contingency plans in place to ensure no-one would flout the ban. At Madrid's Barajas airport, police controlled terminal entrances and asked travellers to explain the reason for their trips, images from La Sexta television showed. In Catalonia, where residents will be unable to leave towns and cities over the weekend, police images showed officers checking drivers on the main roads out of Barcelona. Despite the many restrictions imposed in Spain since July, when the number of cases began rising again, infections have spiralled with the virus claiming more than 35,000 lives and infecting more than 1.1 million people. Experts say the regional lockdowns are a last-ditch effort to head off tougher measures such as a new one nationwide, which the government has repeatedly said it wants to avoid. "The state of emergency.. does not envisage a new stay-at-home order. And we think that with these measures, it won't be necessary," said Health Minister Salvador Illa. In mid-March, Spain closed its borders with France and Portugal and imposed one of the world's strictest lockdowns under which people weren't even allowed out for a daily walk or to exercise for an initial period of more than six weeks. dbh/hmw/wai
|