“Macro epidemic” and controversy in Spain: there are hundreds of young people confined in a hotel after catching COVID-19 during the end of the year trip

Hundreds of young Spanish people have been infected with COVID-19 during year-end trips to a tourist island in the country and several thousand are in quarantine, in a “macro shoot” of the disease surrounded by controversies in Spain, with students confined under police surveillance.

Contagions detected until Monday are close to 900, with fears that they will continue to increase in various regions of the country to which they have returned from these trips to the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.

Those in preventive quarantine only reach 3,000 in the Madrid region.

Regional authorities in the Balearic Islands, the Mediterranean archipelago to which Mallorca belongs, have warned that one in four young people directly or indirectly linked to the epidemic tests positive for the virus.

At least 249 were confined to an island hotel to perform COVID-19 tests, with police surveillance to ensure they complete ten days of quarantine if necessary and with the support of a team of Red Cross psychologists.

Authorities detected that the infections began during a concert, which was evicted by police for failing to comply with preventive measures such as safe distance and the use of masks, and at parties in hotels and the island boats that these young people attended. since the middle of this month.

Accommodation and food (four times a day) are paid for by the Balearic government. The atmosphere at the Hotel Bellver, very close to the Palma promenade, was calm until the young people arrived.

“They scream all the time, they play music at full volume, no matter who is sick and needs a rest. It’s like that 20 hours a day “, Juan, 30, tells the newspaper The world. According to him, they run in the corridors despite the fact that it is forbidden to leave the room and use the landline, reserved for emergencies, to prank other guests and at the reception.

When boredom grows, they engage in food wars. “The girl in the room next to mine kindly asked them to turn the music down. In response, they threw an apple at him, ”he said.

As he explained, the police cordon is limited to checking that no one leaves the hotel, but they do not check what is happening inside.

The government of the archipelago on Monday approved a new regulation for organized trips to the Balearic Islands, which will require all groups of more than twenty people to arrive on the islands with a negative PCR carried out 48 hours before or to have the complete immunization schedule. They also asked for police reinforcement to prevent risky behavior in tourist areas.

The decisions of the authorities are called into question by the parents of the young people, as the mother of one of the students who took the regional government to court for consider illegal detention of your child at the hotel on the island where he was confined with others.

Other parents criticized what they saw as a lack of information on the condition of their children and the date of their return.

“We are negative, we want to go out”, “freedom!” or “kidnapping of the Balearic Islands” are some of the slogans that students shout at whoever wants to listen to them. Of the 249, 62 have already tested positive.

The epidemic comes after the reopening of nightlife in Spain, but with limitations, amid criticism of the attitude of young people who do not respect preventive measures, and while the United Kingdom has just included the Balearic Islands among the safe tourist destinations for its tourists in the face of COVID-19, the only one in Spain.

Spain’s Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto called this “macro epidemic” an “anecdote” and argued that Spain “is a safe destination” for tourism.

(With information from EFE)

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