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Faster 'unlocking' for villages with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants
16/05/2020
GREATER flexibility in leaving lockdown behind could be agreed for villages – especially in areas with limited numbers of Covid-19 cases.
Spain's fourth deputy president – and also demographics, environment and energy minister – Teresa Ribera says it 'does not make sense' for small, rural communities or residential hubs out in the provinces to be restricted in the same way as large cities.
She is looking into towns with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants being able to speed up their 'unlocking' and pass through the four phases of recovery faster than the rest of the country.
Spain's government is keen to avoid a 'one-size-fits-all' approach, keeping residents in small towns or remote rural locations stuck indoors when there is little or no risk to their health purely because Madrid, in particular, has been battered by the pandemic and forced to erect pop-up hospitals and morgues in order to cope.
Sra Ribera says president Pedro Sánchez has promised regional governments to 'look for places where unlocking can move faster', albeit 'with all the precautions in the world'.
“We want to set up measures that actually make sense in small towns,” says Ribera.
“This is what we've done to a limited extent with villages of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants [no set time slots by age apply to walking or outdoor sports in these towns] and there's a commitment between the president of the government and his regional counterparts to seek out parts of the country where normality can be restored faster.”
Quirks of smaller towns, even those without much of a rural lifestyle, include lack of public transport, meaning limited likelihood of people being crammed together, and generally fewer people outside or in public areas all at once.
Of course, this is not always the case – size matters as well as the headcount, as the unusual village of Emperador, north of Valencia, has shown: With 687 residents sharing just eight acres of land, the population density is one person per 48 square metres, meaning each human occupies the equivalent of a small one-bedroomed flat, and walking from one end of town to the other takes a matter of seconds.
As a result, the government has agreed its inhabitants can go out walking, running or cycling, and do their shopping and other errands, in the next town.
The photograph shows the picturesque village of the Vall de Gallinera, northern Alicante province, about half an hour's drive from the coast in the heart of the valley of the same name.
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GREATER flexibility in leaving lockdown behind could be agreed for villages – especially in areas with limited numbers of Covid-19 cases.
Spain's fourth deputy president – and also demographics, environment and energy minister – Teresa Ribera says it 'does not make sense' for small, rural communities or residential hubs out in the provinces to be restricted in the same way as large cities.
She is looking into towns with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants being able to speed up their 'unlocking' and pass through the four phases of recovery faster than the rest of the country.
Spain's government is keen to avoid a 'one-size-fits-all' approach, keeping residents in small towns or remote rural locations stuck indoors when there is little or no risk to their health purely because Madrid, in particular, has been battered by the pandemic and forced to erect pop-up hospitals and morgues in order to cope.
Sra Ribera says president Pedro Sánchez has promised regional governments to 'look for places where unlocking can move faster', albeit 'with all the precautions in the world'.
“We want to set up measures that actually make sense in small towns,” says Ribera.
“This is what we've done to a limited extent with villages of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants [no set time slots by age apply to walking or outdoor sports in these towns] and there's a commitment between the president of the government and his regional counterparts to seek out parts of the country where normality can be restored faster.”
Quirks of smaller towns, even those without much of a rural lifestyle, include lack of public transport, meaning limited likelihood of people being crammed together, and generally fewer people outside or in public areas all at once.
Of course, this is not always the case – size matters as well as the headcount, as the unusual village of Emperador, north of Valencia, has shown: With 687 residents sharing just eight acres of land, the population density is one person per 48 square metres, meaning each human occupies the equivalent of a small one-bedroomed flat, and walking from one end of town to the other takes a matter of seconds.
As a result, the government has agreed its inhabitants can go out walking, running or cycling, and do their shopping and other errands, in the next town.
The photograph shows the picturesque village of the Vall de Gallinera, northern Alicante province, about half an hour's drive from the coast in the heart of the valley of the same name.
Related Topics
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