State of Emergency: very serious

It’s in the news. Spanish Government has declared “State of Emergency”. This declaration gives special powers to the government like the ability to limit the circulation of people, commandeer things or even enter in private properties (but not homes). It’s somewhat similar to State of Siege, but lower in intensity. Being Spain a democracy one could think that this kind of declaration should be reserved to extreme cases. That’s true in the law. It can be declared only due to four reasons:

• Catastrophic events (like floods, earthquakes…)

• Sanitary crisis

• Stopping of Public Services but only in connection with one of the other points.

• Shortage of first necessity products

The declaration of today seems motivated by what seems to be a salvage strike of air traffic controller. It’s being restricted to airports. And the declaration invokes Public services (point 3) with references to point 1 and point 4.

Do we have any kind of catastrophic event? NO.

Do we have shortage of first necessity products? NO

Then???

In my opinion this is an extremely abuse of the law.

I don’t like what air controllers have done. I would like that the government acted like Ronald Reagan did. But I don’t feel comfortable at all with a Government that can limit my freedom because it has lost any perspective.

This is very serious.