In case there was any doubt about how Pedro Sánchez approaches politics, this Wednesday, in the telematic meeting that the Spanish prime minister held with the presidents of the autonomous communities, it was all put on display: one single proposal, the return of the obligatory use of masks in outdoor spaces. The rest of the restrictive measures in response to the pandemic will be left to the autonomous communities to impose. It is not, contrary to how it may seem at first sight, a decision of co-governance, but rather, one of political opportunism in the face of electoral attrition. The Spanish prime minister is desperate to protect December 24th and 25th, the two key days of the Christmas holidays in Spain, and, in the political arena too - when all the pre-election polls, except the CIS, put him at risk of losing power to a parliamentary majority made up of the Popular Party and Vox in the next Spanish elections. It is true that time is running out, but Sánchez's ability to look the other way on such an important issue is surprising and disappointing.
In the end, Sánchez's decision ends up making the coronavirus management into a territorial mess, as the autonomous governments, no matter how many measures they impose, have to obtain approval from the different regional courts and nothing is absolutely effective, anyway, if they don't control the territorial closure of their communities by road, rail, sea and air. In the end, for example, the effectiveness of the drastic measures imposed by the Catalan government is subject to contingencies such as mobility between autonomous communities that have no restrictions and whose indicators show them to be worse off than Catalonia. The government of Catalonia cannot decide what will happen in Aragon, Asturias, the Canary Islands, Castilla y León, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra and the Basque Country, to name the nine autonomous communities that have a higher cumulative incidence (IA14) than Catalonia's this Wednesday: 756.3 in the last 14 days.
Those nine territories, according to the decisions just taken, are not introducing restrictive measures comparable to those in Catalonia, and nor are seven others which are below the Catalan IA14. It is true that in Catalonia the occupancy of ICUs is the highest in the whole of Spain and stands at 30.4%, according to data from the health ministry updated this Wednesday. It is also true that the evolution of new cases is so high that the level of concern among the population has risen sharply in recent days. For Pedro Sánchez - and in this, too, his perspective on the situation is at odds with that of president Pere Aragonès - "we are not in March 2020, nor at Christmas last year. Therefore, the measures must be different and based on experience", he explained as a justification. The summary of this "experience", then, is that, for the rest of Spain, we'll see if anything is done after Christmas, but with 48 hours to go until the start of the festivities, the approach is to cross their fingers, throw in Sánchez's mask regulation and wait and see how it turns out.
Two final ideas: like it or not, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has won an important part of the narrative across Spain. Everyone now wants to be a little Ayuso standing up to the restrictions, something that did not happen in previous waves. Secondly, applying restrictive and partial measures alone, within a state that has the capacity to control the entire perimeter, is of limited effectiveness. In any case, it is necessary to take political action to get the situation reversed in Spain. And also, to wait and see what is authorized and what is not authorized in the next few hours by the Catalan High Court from the measures demanded by the Generalitat government. Among other things, the curfew.