COVID-19

Spain's Supreme Court has revoked a less restrictive prison status awarded to nine Catalan political figures previously sentenced to jail for their part in a secession attempt in Catalonia. The status would have allowed them almost daily release. The court said that such a measure was 'premature' given that none of the nine had served half their sentence and most not even a quarter of it.

Spain plans to vaccinate at least a third of its 47 million residents by June, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said, with the COVID-19 immunisation campaign to start in January. Some 2.5 million people will be vaccinated in the initial stage, which will last two months, Sanchez said. Elderly care home residents and those looking after them will be first in line along with frontline healthcare workers. The second stage […]

Cataluña will not relax coronavirus restrictions on Monday as originally planned because of worsening infection rates, prompting some ski slopes to postpone their planned opening next week. The winter skiing season has become a source of tension among European countries, with some allowing resorts to open and others, like Spain’s neighbour France, banning it and planning border checks to stop people from crossing the border. In Cataluña, which borders France, […]

Internet searches for rural houses in Spain have doubled in regions badly hit by coronavirus cases and restrictions. A report from Spain's leading online property portal Idealista said online inquiries into rural homes in Aragón jumped from 18.9% of total searches in January to 35.2% in November. (Aragón was one of the only autonomous communities in Spain to see more than 1,000 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants during the second […]

The opening of a new coronavirus hospital in Madrid has been met with protests. The Isabel Zendal hospital was built in three months at a cost of nearly 100 million euros. Madrid's government said the hospital will eventually have a capacity of 1,056 beds, which will ease pressure on the region's health-care system during the pandemic. But the cost of the hospital and concerns over the lack of doctors and […]

Economic activity in Spain is expected to fall 11.6% this year – according to report from Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). A bounce-back in 2021 and 2022 will not make up for economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic this year. In Spain, not even the rollout of a vaccine and two years of uninterrupted growth – expected to be 5% in 2020 and 4% in 2021 – […]

The UK will be the first country in the world to use the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine. The UK's medicine regulator (MHRA) has said the jab is safe for rollout next week. Immunisations could start within days for the vaccine that offers up to 95% protection against infection by the coronavirus. The UK has already ordered 40m doses – enough to vaccinate 20m people. The first 800,000 doses will arrive in […]