• Health: The overwhelming list of reasons why sport should be an essential activity

  • Overweight We come out fatter: Spaniards have gained an average of 5.7kg since the start of the pandemic

They say that we all have a national soccer coach, a president of the Government and, probably, a talkative inside us.

That all of us, especially in moments as delicate as this one, believe we are in possession of the truth.

But the truth is that there are things that are difficult to 'swallow' in a scenario like the one in which we live.

Details such as that, for example,

playing sports is considered 'a luxury activity'

from the tax point of view when it should be considered

an essential activity

, no matter where you look.

Because, despite the continuous calls for attention from physical activity professionals, sports practice in Spain is taxed with

21% VAT

(until 2012 it was 8%), the same percentage that applies to tobacco consumption or alcohol.

In other words, it is 'just as expensive' to do something that clearly benefits our health as something that 'seriously' harms it (euphemism for fatally).

"We are an essential sector that provide a service that improves people's health, but we are not treated as such. We ask something very reasonable: that the practice of

physical exercise ceases to be considered a luxury activity

charged with a VAT of 21% , the maximum tax rate in our country ", explains Adolfo Ruiz Valdivieso, president of the National Federation of Sports Facilities Employers (FNEID).

Ruiz Valdivieso affirms that, "as in other sectors that have been listened to and taken into account, we request that this tax be lowered to the services we provide in our facilities, since paradoxically we are the only one directly

linked to health,

"he adds.

SECTOR IN CRISIS

With a

53% drop in turnover

and the risk that 44% of the centers will be forced to close, the sports facilities sector is going through a critical moment despite its indisputable role as

guarantor of public health

.

Key in the prevention of various diseases and a faithful ally of our immune system, the practice of physical activity is now more important than ever, not only for our own interest, but also for the good of a health system that was very affected by the outbreak of the coronavirus.

And even more so if we take into account the

physical and psychological consequences

that the confinement and the limitation of movements that the coronavirus has imposed on us have left us as a painful legacy.

A radical change in lifestyle that, according to a study by Ipsos, has made us

Spaniards gain an average of 5.7 kilos

since the pandemic began and give more to cigarettes and to drink than ever before.

Fatter and more sedentary, lack of movement is also decisively influencing our state of mind, making us cannon fodder for those

negative emotions

that are emerging so strongly in these times: stress, sadness and uncertainty.

For all this, the professionals of physical activity and well-being demand, once again, "the adoption of urgent measures that contribute to promoting healthy lifestyles and active lifestyles, which in parallel have an impact on the improvement of the state physical and mental health of the population, and, consequently, in lower public health and pharmaceutical spending ".

Will they listen to them this time?

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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