Spain

MADRID, Dec 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Spanish Health Minister, Salvador Illa said yesterday that vaccinations against COVID-19 will begin in Spain on Dec 27.

The first vaccinations will use the BioNTech Pfizer vaccine, which will arrive in Spain on Dec 26.

“If Europe agreed that vaccination begins in a coordinated manner, in Spain, we are going to start the first possible day,” Illa said, at a press conference.

MADRID (AP) — As the two mortuary workers pushed a stretcher with a bagged corpse out of the room, the elderly man in the adjacent bed briefly awakened from his dementia. “Is he dead?” he muttered, extending his arm, trying to touch his roommate for the last time.

Reflecting on a scene repeated too many times, one of the workers, Manel Rivera, despaired at the growing number of elderly people dying as the coronavirus resurges.

“The sad thing is,” he said of the surviving man in the Barcelona nursing home, “in a few days we’ll probably come back for him.”

MADRID, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- King Felipe VI of Spain will remain in quarantine for 10 days and has been forced to cancel all his official engagements after being in contact on Sunday with a person who tested positive for COVID-19 one day later, the Spanish Royal Household confirmed Monday afternoon to the country's state TV network RTVE.

MORALZARZAL, Spain (Reuters) - At 81 years old Spanish mountaineer Carlos Soria is training to tackle one of the world’s highest peaks, a challenge he will dedicate to elderly victims of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“To all those who have disappeared because of this terrible pandemic, this terrible crisis, I want as an elderly person to dedicate it to them,” Soria said outside his home in the Sierra Guadarrama mountains, north of Madrid.

Travel restrictions permitting, Soria hopes to go to Nepal in the spring to take on the 8,167-metre Dhaulagiri climb.

MADRID, Nov 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Spain’s High Court on Tuesday open the trial of three suspected militants linked to a 2017 attack in Barcelona which killed 14 people: Spain’s deadliest in over a decade.

A single attacker drove a rented van into crowds on Barcelona’s central La Rambla boulevard, causing 14 deaths and injuring over a hundred people. Another man was killed during the attacker’s getaway.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain would get the first vaccines against COVID-19 developed by U.S. pharmaceuticals Pfizer PFE.N and its partner BioNTech 22UAy.DE in early 2021, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday.

The country would initially get 20 million vaccine doses, enough to immunize 10 million people, Illa said in an interview with state broadcaster TVE.

The vaccination would be free for everyone, Illa added.

Enough people would be vaccinated by April-May, so that the fight against the pandemic in Spain would move to another stage, Illa added.

MADRID, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish authorities have decided to close four more regions in the country to contain the rampant coronavirus amid worsening situation, local governments said Wednesday.

Movement in Andalusia, Castile-La-Mancha, Castile and Leon, and Murcia regions have been restricted due to the worsening epidemiological situation.

Murcia closes borders for 14 days, while Andalusia, Castile and Leon, and Castile-La-Mancha until Nov. 9.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Buckling under the resurgence of the coronavirus in Europe, the Spanish government on Sunday declared a national state of emergency that includes an overnight curfew in hopes of not repeating the near collapse of the country’s hospitals.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the decision to restrict free movement on the streets of Spain between 11 p.m.-6 a.m. allows exceptions for commuting to work, buying medicine, and caring for elderly and young family members. He said the curfew takes effect Sunday night and would likely remain in place for six months.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Friday that more needed to be done to combat the COVID-19 pandemic but he stopped short of announcing new measures and instead called on citizens to act responsibly.

With Spain’s COVID-19 cases soaring this week to total over a million - the highest in Western Europe - the government has said the pandemic was out of control.

But it lacks the majority in parliament to push bold steps and override sometimes reluctant regions who decide on health matters.

MADRID (AP) — A Madrid court on Wednesday acquitted the heads of Catalonia’s regional police of charges of sedition and disobedience for what state prosecutors had argued was their alleged role in the northeast region’s 2017 secession attempt.

Spain’s National Court ruled in a 2-1 decision that police chief Josep Lluis Trapero, officer Teresa Laplana, and political heads Pere Soler and César Puig hadn’t supported the illegal secession referendum organized against court orders by Catalonia’s government prior to its unsuccessful declaration of independence.