Andalucia Insists Spain Should Allow All 8 Provinces to Enter Phase 2 At The Same Time Instead of Leaving Costa del Sol’s Malaga and Granada Behind

THE Junta de Andalucia will request that the Central Government allows all eight Andalucian provinces to enter Phase 2 at the same time, rather than leaving Costa del Sol’s Malaga and Granada behind who do not necessarily need to be in Phase 1.

Elias Bendodo, the spokesperson for the Andalucian government has announced that he and Juan Marin, the vice president of the Junta are rallying to get all Andalucian provinces up to the same speed.

According to Bendodo, the petition for Andalucia to progress onto Phase 2 on May 25 is based on its favourable evolution during the pandemic. In the territory there are only 261 individuals hospitalised with Covid-19, 64 of which are in intensive care and in the last 24 hours Andalucia has recorded no deaths from the virus, which gives them a “beacon of hope.”

For this reason, Bendodo is confident that all of Andalucia should “hold hands in unison when entering Phase 2 next Monday. We should not accept that anyone puts two different speeds on Andalucia, unless this is because of justified medical conditions.”

Juan Marin has insisted that the Andalucian community must receive the same treatment as any other region and that the Central Government should not “make the same mistakes which it will have to rectify” which already occurred when they decided to leave Granada and Malaga in Phase 0.

On another hand, Elías Bendodo has reported that Andalucia is currently in a position to carry out 6,000 coronavirus detection PCR tests per day, which would amount to 42,000 weekly tests. He also pointed out that, in total, 439,000 PCRs and rapid tests have been carried out throughout the community and that in the next few days they will begin to test Local Police officers.

As for whether the Junta is in favour of making the use of masks in all public spaces mandatory, a notion which the central government is debating, Bendodo has indicated that if this is decided Andalucia will not fight against it, however it has demanded that any single regulation be uniform throughout all of Spain’s territories.