Madrid faces off with Spanish Government over Quarantine

The regional government of Madrid rejected calls from Spain’s national government to impose a stricter lockdown over its citizens. Madrid’s most recent measures restrict non-essential movement in several of the city’s most infected neighborhoods, but Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government called for restrictions to cover the entire city of more than three million people. The parties have entered emergency negotiations, trying to reach a solution that would prevent national authorities from assuming control over the region.

Europe is in the middle of a second wave of COVID-19 after the previous peak in May. Spain currently has the highest coronavirus infection rate of any European country, with 319 cases per 100,000 people. Madrid itself has a much higher rate—721 cases per 100,000 people, and the city accounts for more than a third of the country’s total cases. 

Last week, Madrid premier Isabel Díaz Ayuso placed limits on 850,000 residents in highly affected areas, preventing them from traveling outside of their neighborhoods except for essential purposes. Protests erupted among citizens who felt that the lockdown was too restrictive and that it unfairly targeted poorer neighborhoods. Hundreds took to the streets in the district of Vallecas, chanting slogans including “Vallecas is not a ghetto!” and “It’s not a lockdown, it’s segregation!” 

The national government, led by the Socialist Party, asked for regional officials to expand the quarantine order to cover the entire city. “I don’t want to hide from you that we are going to have some very hard weeks in Madrid but we can bend the curve if we do what we need to do,” said Salvador Illa, the national Health Minister. Madrid’s ruling coalition is led by the conservative People’s Party, the Socialist Party’s main political rival. 

Besides partisan conflict, the battle over Madrid’s quarantine raises constitutional questions. Each of Spain’s 17 regions has its own autonomous healthcare system and would typically have the sole authority to set quarantine policy. The “state of alarm” that allowed the national government to broadly overrule regional authorities expired in June, but a statute remains in place that requires residents to wear masks in public and observe other containment measures. National authorities are usually slow to invoke constitutional measures to bypass regional governments, but they historically have done so in times of unrest. For example, the Spanish parliament suspended Catalonia’s regional government during its most recent push for independence in 2017. 

In Spain and in many other countries, responses to the pandemic have become heated political debates, often framed as conflicts between public safety and personal freedom. Spain’s high infection rate poses a risk not only to those living in the country but also to many neighboring countries that follow the EU’s free movement policy. The political divide is exacerbated by the rivalry between opposing parties and Spain’s federal system of government, which limits the national government’s control over individual regions. How the Prime Minister and Madrid’s leaders choose to move forward will impact Europe’s infection rates in the short term, but could also set new precedents regarding the balance of power in a country grappling with Basque and Catalonian separatist movements.