The Madrid region is going to close its borders during the December holiday week, as it did for the recent All Saints and Almudena fiestas. Tuesday 8th December is a national holiday in Spain, while 7th December is a holiday in all regions except Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Valencia, Galicia and the Basque Country. Under normal circumstances, this would be a time when many Spaniards take a holiday and travel, for example, to second residences in other parts of the country.
During the second wave of the coronavirus, the Madrid regional government – headed by the conservative Popular Party (PP) and centre-right Ciudadanos (Citizens), and propped up by far-right Vox – has avoided such perimetral lockdowns for longer than is “strictly necessary,” in the words of the premier, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Unlike other regions that closed for longer, Madrid only shut down on the weekend days and the actual holiday themselves in October and November. But this time around, the period in question will be longer, and no one will be able to enter or leave the region between 4th to 13th December.
In the meantime, the regional government will be leaving the night-time curfew of midnight to 6am in place, ahead of the Christmas season. “We want to get to Christmas in the best conditions possible,” said the region’s deputy healthcare chief, Antonio Zapatero.
“Madrid is going to continue to be strict and will continue to adopt measures of prudence and will try to implement measures so that the virus does not develop,” he added in an interview with Antena 3.
According to Health Ministry data, the 14-day cumulative number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants has been falling for weeks, and at the end of last week came in at 297. This is the first time it fell below 300. The current average across Spain is 436.