So this would normally be the start of the Easter parades for Semana Santa and for the second year they have been cancelled. I’m not sure if they’ve been cancelled throughout Spain, but they have here. We still have our nighttime curfew and during the Easter period ‘casual’ travel between regions is banned. Someone could go and visit family or friends, but we couldn’t just head off to Malaga on a whim.
The whole issue of tourism is becoming a hot topic, and I guess how someone feels about it will depend on how dependent their income is on tourism. Since last September visitors have had to produce a negative test when arriving in Spain, and that will continue, but of course, with the Easter holidays, there will be a lot more people travelling.
Visitors to Spain will have to adhere to the laws (wearing masks, social distancing etc). They will also have to adhere to travel restrictions, so people arriving in Madrid, won’t be able to travel to Andalucia, for example. I wonder what sort of pressure this will put on policing.
On one side, people are pleased to welcome tourists back and on the other side (people whose incomes don’t depend on tourism) there’s a concern that tourism will increase cases of Covid. Spain has done pretty well (since September) of keeping the country open, with schools and businesses operating as normal, so there’s a worry that this is in jeopardy. There is a photo in the national newspaper of maskless German tourists flouting all the rules, which doesn’t help.
And in a cruel twist of fate – whereas we normally see a break in the lovely spring weather at Easter, with torrential rain and storms falling over the Easter period – this year we are just seeing little smiley suns in the weather forecast. The one year when bad weather would actually be a good thing!