WEARING masks outdoors will cease to be compulsory from Saturday, June 26, meaning the next two days will be the last weekend of obligatory face-coverings in the street in a year.
They must still be worn in indoor areas – except, of course, on private property with one's own household members, and strongly recommended when meeting other friends or family at their homes – including in cars, unless travelling with members of the same household or alone.
At present, the moment a person in Spain steps out of his or her home, even in communal areas of apartment blocks, they are required by law to wear a correctly-fitted mask at all times – other than in bars and restaurants when physically eating or drinking, and should put them back on during after-dinner chats or long pauses between sips.
They will still be a legal requirement on public transport, even open-top buses, but have so far not been mandatory when taking part in rigorous sports activities, such as running or cycling, where they may inhibit breathing.
If a person suffers from a medical condition that makes it dangerous – not just slightly uncomfortable, but genuinely painful and harmful to them – to wear a mask, they are required to get a note to that effect from their doctor and will need to show it if the police stop them, to prove their 'exemption'.
Even then, unmasked members of the public, with or without a doctor's note, are not permitted inside shops or public buildings, except at the discretion of the owners or managers where this is unavoidable and probably only when the premises are virtually empty.
Not only are any traders permitted to deny entry to people without a mask on, but they are actually expected to, and could face fines themselves if customers enter with their faces uncovered.
But now, they will at least be able to take these off in the street.
Opinions are sharply divided on whether this is a sensible decision or not.
For those living in small towns, villages or open countryside, who have the pavement or footpath to themselves almost all the time or perhaps pass one person per 100 metres for a fleeting half-second – during which one of the two steps into the road to avoid the other – there is little to be gained from wearing a mask out of doors, as there is nothing they need to protect themselves from and nobody they need to protect.
But in big cities, especially during peak shopping times when pavement crowds are jostling, pressing and dense and it is impossible to avoid being within inches of anybody else most of the time, wearing a mask is every bit as necessary from an epidemiological point of view as it is inside a building.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com