The Spanish executive has made it official this Thursday night, through the government gazette, that it will allow the continuation of the special lockdown of Catalonia's Òdena Basin, centred on the city of Igualada, 60 kilometres from Barcelona. The health ministry in Madrid issued a resolution tonight that stipulates that as of 12 midnight on Thursday, the lockdown of the municipalities of Igualada, Vilanova del Camí, Santa Margarida de Montbuí and Òdena will be extended, "under the same terms established" as until now.
This marks the Sánchez government's response on another thorny point relating to its centralised approach to managing Spain's coronavirus crisis. In the case of the Òdena Basin, the lockdown was imposed by Catalan authorities on 12th March in response to the discovery of a serious local outbreak of Covid-19 in the area. At that point, the Catalan government had the competencies to impose specific local controls; however, two days later, Pedro Sánchez took emergency powers in response to the crisis, and chose to use them by applying the same medicine right across the Spanish state, thus ignoring the demands of Catalonia's Quim Torra and others for even tighter lockdowns, in specific autonomous regions or problem areas.
The Catalan government sees it as positive that the special confinement put in place two weeks ago in Òdena has been extended, even though the even more complete lockdown that Quim Torra's administration has demanded has not been accepted. This area will continue to be the only one separately locked down - with police checkpoints controlling entries and exits - in the entire state.
On Thursday morning, Spanish government stated that it did not accept the request for fuller lockdown and, when questioned on the matter, the Spanish health emergency coordinator Fernando Simón called the effectiveness of the special lockdown into question. In turn, this prompted a strong reaction from Catalan interior minister Miquel Buch, who regretted that all the information he had received on the Madrid response was coming through the media.
"The measures taken today will be effective in 14 days," said Buch, referring to the time lag due to the virus's incubation period and the inability to know what the real level of its propagation is at present. "And the photo we are seeing today, is what happened 14 days ago. Therefore, we have no time." Why, he asked, did the government of Spain not accept tougher measures, "which are sure to be more drastic but also the most effective?"
Earlier, Buch had said that in the locked down Igualada area, the mortality of the virus had reached 63.1 per 10,000 inhabitants, a higher level than in the Italian region of Lombardy.
Finally, the Spanish government rejected the tightening of the measure demanded by the Catalan administration, but accepted the extension of the existing controls. The resolution from Salvador Illa's health ministry states that the measures included in the previous order will remain in effect for fifteen calendar days from midnight Thursday, and will do so under the same conditions as until now.