WELCOME news for traders and the public has been announced in the Comunidad Valenciana: Bars, cafés and restaurants can now open their inside areas with up to 30% of their usual safe number limits, and their outside seating can now be 100% occupied – subject to tables being at least two metres apart.
A blanket shutdown of all bars and eateries – other than for takeaway food or home deliveries – crippled business and social life from the beginning of the year, and came combined with orders for all 'non-essential' shops and trade premises to be closed by 18.00.
Since March 2, cafés and restaurants have at last been able to open their outside terraces, but at only 50% capacity – many have not yet done so, especially those with only a small handful of tables outside, who say it would cost them more to open than they would earn from customer numbers permitted.
Now, from this coming Monday (March 15), reopening is permitted, but again, all bars and eateries have to be shut by 18.00 – effectively meaning restaurants can only serve lunch, not evening meals.
Limits of four people per table have been established, but this means residents can at last meet with friends and family whom they do not live with – a blanket ban on visiting or staying at other people's houses continues, having been in place since January, meaning a difficult and frustrating time for those living on their own unless they have been able to form a 'bubble' with another household.
This, says regional president Ximo Puig, is to prevent social gatherings and parties of large numbers or of people from several households.
Masks must still be worn inside and outside of bars, except when actually eating or drinking, nobody is allowed to sit at the bar area, and the interior must be fully ventilated.
Weddings, christenings and funerals can now have more guests – up to a third of the usual safe limit for the venue, or 15, whichever is the lower, where held indoors, and the lesser of either a third of the limit or 20 people when they take place outside.
Sports centres, indoor swimming pools, gyms and similar facilities can now reopen in the region, but with only a third of the usual number of people, and subject to mandatory social distancing and all other health and hygiene measures.
Children's educational facilities – not including compulsory schooling, which has not shut down since last spring – and leisure facilities will be back in operation from Monday, subject to a limit of one third, or 10 people including adult supervisors, whichever is the lower.
All fiesta headquarters remain shut, and the massive March Fallas festival, celebrated across the province of Valencia and parts of that of Castellón and the north of Alicante, remains cancelled – for the second year running and only the third year in their history during peacetime.
All other restrictions remain in place, including the region borders being closed, and the curfew between 22.00 and 06.00.
The situation will be reviewed on April 12, a week after Easter Monday.
Puig says residents in the three provinces of Alicante, Valencia and Castellón have 'made immense efforts' which have paid off, 'achieving an enormous amount in a short time' – in the past month or so, accumulated incidence of Covid-19 contagion has plummeted in the region by 96%.
Regional minister for Universal Healthcare, Ana Barceló, reveals that in the past two weeks, the extremely alarming figure of 1,500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (1.5% of the population) has fallen to just 57 per 100,000 (0.057% of the population).
At present, the national average accumulated contagion incidence is double that of the Comunidad Valenciana, with hospital admissions falling from 4,700 at the peak of the 'third wave' of the pandemic, down to the current 700, in a region with a headcount of just under five million, more than half the population of London, spread across 542 towns and villages over a land-mass approximately the size of Wales.
