Spanish sport8k8 official websites venues set for return of fans

Sporting venues in Spain will be allowed to have up to 40 percent capacity crowds in August after the country's health ministry announced a trial relaxation of measures.

Health minister Carolina Darias said that until the end of the month, when guidelines would be reassessed, open air venues can have up to 40 percent of their seats filled, with closed arenas for sports such as basketball being allowed to have up to 30 percent, although social distancing of 1.5 meters would still be required between fans, masks must be worn, and smoking and eating inside arenas will be forbidden.

The minister said the country was at a "stabilization phase" regarding the spread of COVID-19, with the most recent 14-day incidence rate of the virus at 633 cases per 100,000 people, 20 less than the previous day's figure. A small number of fans were allowed into some games at the end of the last soccer season, depending on the local health situation, but the latest announcement is seen as a more significant step.

Spain, along with Italy, was among the first countries in Europe to be hit by the pandemic in its earliest stages, specifically because of a UEFA Champions League soccer match on 19 Feb 2020, between Italian side Atalanta and Spanish side Valencia.

This was attended by more than 44,000 Italian fans who traveled from the city of Bergamo to Milan, where the game was held because of its bigger stadium capacity, along with an estimated 2,500 Valencia fans. Players from both teams subsequently tested positive, and two days after the game, the first case of locally transmitted COVID-19 was recorded in Italy, with Fabiano di Marco, a specialist at the Pope John XXIII hospital in Bergamo, telling the Corriere della Sera newspaper that the match had been "a biological bomb, unfortunately".

Spain's latest death toll is 81,844, with the Delta variant accounting for 45 percent of new infections.

The new rule will come into effect on Aug 13, which is the same weekend that Spain's top soccer competition, La Liga, starts its new season. Priority for match admission will be given to season ticket holders, and fan travel from region to region will be discouraged.

Bilbao in northern Spain had been scheduled to host games in this year's delayed Euro 2020 championship, before games were switched to Seville in southern Spain because the local authorities could not give guarantees about what numbers of spectators would be allowed into the stadium because of the local COVID-19 situation, a decision by European soccer's governing body UEFA that enraged the local authorities.

Quoted in El Pais newspaper, former World Health Organization official Rafael Bengoa said Spain had not handled the fourth wave of infection well, leading to the latest wave, and a repeat must be avoided.

"With the delta variant, we have to be very patient because it is much more contagious," he said. "We must ensure we have two or three weeks with a very low incidence rate and in this case, we will have a good autumn."