Although the Government continues with its attack on the Community of Madrid, demands from the Prime Minister still fall short of any closure of the capital, despite the public ultimatums of his Minister of Health Salvador Illa to the regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
Sanchez knows that the economic disaster would be lethal to both the city and the nation and it seems clear that he wants the ‘PP’ leader to be the one to bear this blame.
In addition, legal advice warns him of a serious risk: that of ending up in the courts and losing the case of only confining the city Province of Madrid, because the reality is that other areas such as Navarra are in a similar position, and others such as La Rioja or Castilla-La Mancha are already exceeding 400 infections per 100,000 inhabitants with Illa now requesting the closure of areas that exceed 500 cases.
While Madrid extended it’s restrictions in Covid-19 hotspots on Friday it rejected calls for a city-wide lockdown.
The following day, Spain’s Health Minister Salvador Illa said current restrictions did not go far enough. He said it was “time to act with determination” to control the pandemic.
Madrid is once again at the epicentre of Spain’s coronavirus outbreak, as it was during the first peak earlier this year. The country recorded a further 12,272 cases on Friday, bringing the official total to 716,481, the highest infection tally in Western Europe.
However, Isabel Díaz Ayuso has responded to the attacks that the social communist government has launched to force her to close Madrid. The Madrid president said on Monday that “I am clear about what is needed for Madrid, but it was Pedro Sánchez’s ministers who have decided to muddy everything.”
“I am very clear about what is needed for Madrid and we have not moved from there. Government ministers have been the ones who have said that we are getting on badly but we know what we want for Madrid”, she stated.
Despite the statement she stressed that this does not mean that they will not talk, adding that if the proposals from central government are good, they will be integrated.
She said that the “constant” disagreement and the “continuous misinformation” leaves our residents in “a state of absolute confusion” because they do not know what is going to happen or what measures they need to take.
“I prefer that we return to sitting around a table and agreeing a joint plan, that we work together, because we are in a pandemic, a health pandemic, a social pandemic and an economic pandemic …”,
