Neighbours’ demands coronavirus frontline staff move out treated as hate crimes in Spain

MESSAGES calling for workers on the coronavirus frontline to move out of their homes will be treated as hate crimes, the National Police has announced.

Police commissioner Maria del Pilar Allue made it clear at a press briefing today Tuesday that actions like pinning notes to the front doors of health professionals or supermarket staff suggesting they go and live elsewhere so they didn’t infect their neighbours with Covid-19 would be considered an offence and liable to prosecution.

She also described this kind of behavior as “highly reprehensible.”

Today’s clarification on the issue followed a series of posts on social media about messages aimed at essential service workers living in residential complexes or apartment blocks urging them not to go back to their homes until the health crisis is over.

“We know about your good work in the hospital and we are grateful, but you also have to think about your neighbours. There are elderly and children here”, a note stuck on the entrance to a Ciudad Real doctor’s home read.

“The world is full of ungrateful and bad people”, tweeted one of the doctor’s friends.