Outbreak in Mallorca Inside the Covid hotel: "They run through the corridors, make parties and phone pranks. It's hell"
Parents "Our children are not criminals and they are locked up, it is discriminatory"
The Balearic Government has had to invest 100,000 public euros to monitor and shield the Palma hotel with extraordinary security, where
249 young students arrived in Mallorca
to spend their study trip
this Tuesday
.
That figure is added to another 300,000 euros per month that, according to sources from the Health department, the regional coffers will have to pay for the agreement reached to rent the Bellver hotel, the now famous four-star establishment on the city's seafront in which this summer will confine all those infected non-residents of the Islands with mild symptoms, as well as those who have had close contact with a positive for Covid.
The Governing Council of the Islands approved on Monday an emergency contract in which it had exactly 99,988 euros for the Son Llàtzer public hospital to reinforce the surveillance and security of the Bellver hotel, a four-star hotel in the Melià chain. The money comes from the European Regional Development Fund to combat the effects of the pandemic.
This year the Government enabled the Bellver from the first day of June to be able to house people suspected of having been infected or those who, while in Mallorca, would have tested positive in a PCR test.
If symptoms develop, as has happened with 14 of the students, they are transferred to a public hospital
. Obviously, the hotel is closed and it is not only students. There are another thirty isolated tourists there.
This measure is not new this year.
In 2020, two hotels were opened, one in Palma and the other in the coastal town of El Arenal.
The Government calls them 'bridge hotels' but everyone knows them as 'Covid hotels'.
This year, with the advanced vaccination campaign and low rates, the Government had booked the Bellver hotel.
With the outbreak of the students it is almost complete.
The judicial battle
The Balearic Prosecutor's Office has opposed this Tuesday to endorse the resolution issued by the Balearic Government last weekend, the controversial confinement of 265 young people who were on a study trip on the Island when the massive outbreak broke out, which has already been claimed more than 1,100 infections throughout Spain.
So far, 200 habeas corpus have been filed in the Palma Guard Court.
The Public Ministry analyzed the urgent matter on Monday, when a judicial procedure was opened before the Administrative Litigation Court number 3 of Palma, which must decide within three days whether to ratify the measure or declare it null. The decision could be appealed before the Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands but could decline with the resolution of the Palma judge, which is expected to be known between this Wednesday and Thursday.
The Prosecutor's Office gave the judge a harsh report against the Balearic Government
chaired by Francina Armengol (PSOE).
He considers that the order issued by the Regional Ministry of Health is not sufficiently motivated and could be legally void, for which he reported unfavorably.
It maintains that the measure "was neither fully justified nor proportionate".
He denounces the lack of motivation of the resolution issued in the early hours of Saturday, when the Government had to urgently order the forced transfer of the young people to the Bellver hotel from the vacation hotel where they were staying.
Among other things, the prosecutor maintains that the isolation measure has not been sufficiently individualized for each of the boys, many of them minors.
Boys and girls who at this time, and since last Sunday, remain confined in their rooms.
In addition, he emphasizes that other clients were staying in the hotels, and "there is no evidence that only young students stayed."
Precisely,
Parents who denounce the
supposedly illegal
isolation of their children use this argument: other hotel guests were not confined because they were not students
.
The Prosecutor's Office aligns itself with them in these arguments.
"The resolution [of the Balearic Government] only mentions and considers the aforementioned young students to be suspected of contact in a general, presumptive and indeterminate way," reflects the prosecutor's report. And he adds: "It is this unique condition of a student on a study trip that makes them suspects for the resolution."
The order "does not specify or specify in a clear or direct way any contact with any of the confirmed positives in the autonomous communities of origin." In other words, the Prosecutor's Office indicates that "it is unknown in which hotel they were residing, to which travel group they belonged, on what specific dates they resided in a certain hotel or another and if, indeed, they maintained real contact and with what intensity with the specific persons whose confinement it is intended to ratify ".
The report has been prepared within 24 hours, so it has limited itself to analyzing the confinement order issued at dawn on Saturday by the general direction of Public Health of the Balearic Government.
Despite reporting unfavorably, the Prosecutor's Office leaves the door open to new supplementary information that the government could deliver in the next few hours.
The Health resolution was accompanied by an annex with an extensive list of names of young students who were subject to the order.
As they are measures that affect fundamental rights, the Office of the Prosecutor considers that they should be more motivated and that the justifications should be individualized or narrowed down further.
Otherwise, it could be a legally void act or constitutional rights may have been violated.
Before issuing an order resolving the issue,
the judge has requested more documentation from the Balearic Government
, which throughout this Tuesday has sent new data to try to shore up its decision and obtain judicial support for its decision, adopted at the peak of the tension experienced these days on the island.
Article 8 of the Law of Contentious-Administrative Jurisdiction is the one that empowers the judicial authorities to authorize and ratify the measures that the public administration considers urgent and necessary for the public health of the population when it affects fundamental rights.
For this reason, the Government submitted its resolution to the validation of the courts.
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Palma de Mallorca
Majorca
Coronavirus
PSOE
Spain
Balearics
Justice
Covid 19
HBPR
Coronavirus Students from Cádiz on their end-of-year trip to Mallorca denounce that they are being confined to a hotel
Balearic Islands Students infected with Covid-19 in the 'macro outbreak' in Mallorca are close to 900
Mallorca "Our children are not criminals and they are locked up, it is discriminatory"
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