It must be concluded that there has been an error of strategy when, without having a public health situation that is any worse than our neighbours, the measures being taken in response to it by the United Kingdom and France, in particular the former, are horrific for Catalonia and for Spain. Within just a few hours, the French prime minister recommended not travelling to Catalonia because of the coronavirus; the world's largest tourism company, the tour operator TUI, cancelled all its trips to Spain; and the United Kingdom decreed a quarantine for travellers arriving from Spain which has come into force immediately.
Is the situation in Spain so alarming as to require these measures being adopted by France and the UK? There is no indication that this is the case and the fact that identical parameters are not employed across all countries in managing the evolution of the pandemic has caused confusion over information and the main fact that ends up being understood is, above all, the list of measures that each government applies. Thus, for example, it is not known how each autonomous community is using tests to find out the number of people infected, but the paradox is that in Catalonia there are more people infected but fewer hospitalized than in Madrid, whose data registers far fewer infections. Are the Madrid numbers credible? Do they mean that their management is better? Or is it simply that checks are being reduced so that the spotlight is not on the Spanish capital?
Both the Catalan authorities and those of the Spanish state have a very serious problem with their discourse in terms of finding the balance point between the protection of health and the defence of the economy. All this is exacerbated by the fact that only the Spanish government can impose mandatory measures while the Catalan authorities have to move in the field of recommendations as stepping over this line can lead to blunt judicial rejection of the measures. The result is that the Catalan government has to act with one of its hands tied and then PP leader Pablo Casado calls for the centralization of decision-making.
We must protect health as much as possible but it has to be more than just empty pronouncements that the vast majority of citizens do not comply with and which end up being lethal to the economy. Finding the exact point of risk that is acceptable for a society is not an easy task as naturally everyone aspires to reduce the danger to the minimum - if possible, to zero. But it will be necessary to say sooner rather than later that perhaps this is impossible and that we will have to take the maximum measures of public health security but at the same time allow life to be as normal as possible. And that what was a good strategy in the spring may now be an unforgivable mistake.