Nightclubs, bars and beaches - some of Spain's most beloved summer venues - are facing new lockdown restrictions after turning into coronavirus hot spots.
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The northeast region of Catalonia now hosts two of the most worrying virus hotspots in Spain, prompting authorities in Barcelona and an interior agricultural area around Lleida to tighten restrictions that were relaxed only a month ago when Spain had its devastating outbreak in check.
Catalonia ordered all nightlife venues to close for 15 days and applied a midnight curfew on bars in and around Barcelona and Lleida late on Friday, hours after French Prime Minister Jean Castex urged French citizens not to visit Catalonia due to the upticks in new infections.
Local mayors said the shutdown should have been ordered days earlier.
"The measures have arrived late, but they have now been taken and myself and my fellow mayors feel that they are the correct measures to take," Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau said Saturday before asking for Catalan regional police to help her municipal police enforce the curfew and closures.
Spain reported over 900 new daily infections on Thursday and Friday as authorities warned that the country which lost at least 28,400 lives before getting its outbreak under control could be facing the start of a second major onslaught.
National health authorities warned that Spain already could be heading for a "second wave" of the virus that experts had forecast would come during the colder months.
Catalonia's regional government, run by separatists who had complained about Spain's centralisation of the health crisis from March to June, are struggling to maintain tabs on the growing clusters that have overwhelmed undermanned contract tracing teams.
In Pamplona, authorities have tested 1000 residents aged 17 to 28 after monitoring an outbreak associated with young people socialising in a neighbourhood that has since been put under medical surveillance.
Officials in Madrid are considering similar restrictions.
Young people are not the only ones unhappy with the moves. Two business associations for nightclubs and bars say they will take the Catalan government to court to block a decision they say puts 35,000 jobs at risk.
Australian Associated Press