Widely reported in the Spanish press, the former Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, once again breaks the confinement as he goes out to exercise in the streets surrounding his home, in Madrid, something that he is said to do regularly, many residents are beginning to wonder if the authorities in the region are turning a blind eye.
“If it were a normal member of the public they would have been fined and possibly put in prison by now,” said Che Castells, who lives in the neighbourhood. “They are playing by a different set of rules.”
Rajoy is not the first ex PM to ignore the government’s lockdown order as José María Aznar and his wife, Ana Botella, the ex-mayor of Madrid, drove down from the home in the capital to spend lockdown at their luxurious villa in the Guadalmina Baja suburb of Marbella.
The state of alarm does not allow people onto the streets to exercise or to practise sport and you can only go out to buy basic necessities, to work with a company certificate, to go to a medical centre or a pharmacy.
On numerous occasions the Spanish State has promised zero tolerance with regards to compliance of lockdown. It will be interesting to see if they choose to apply it in the case of the two former PM’s.
