Following yesterdays Governing Council with a change of alert level for Tenerife, the approval of the new decree to protect Covid measures, and the clarification of capacities, closing times and group sizes by the TSJC, many people are reading misleading headlines this morning regarding nightlife, i.e night clubs, discos, and fun pubs, being allowed to re-open straight away, however, unfortunately this is not the case yet.
So what is the situation?
Well as of midnight last night Tenerife has moved into Level 3 which, because of the previous confusion and TSJC rulings is hardly any different from Level 4, but what it is, is a big step in the right direction.
Yesterday the TSJC ruled on group sizes allowed in each of the levels in public, private, indoors, outdoors etc, which are Level 1 ten people, Level 2 six people, Levels 3 and 4 only four people, and clarified capacities and closing times at the levels to establish between them, and also to make Level 4 stricter in the future to ‘bend the curve’ quicker.
However, any other changes are part of the new decree-law approved yesterday, which will then be printed in the BOC and sent to the Canary Islands Parliament to be passed as a bill, before it can be implemented.
To put it in simpler terms, here is the termination from the official Government press release:
“The Governing Council of the Canary Islands approved the decree-law yesterday, that brings together control measures against the spread of Covid-19 and that includes, among other things, the possibility of opening all nightlife businesses in the Islands, although with a time limit depending on the level of alert in which each island is in”
The keyword in the above is ‘possibility', but as the President of the Canary Islands Government, Ángel Víctor Torres, explained in the press conference after the Governing Council meeting last night, the document that will be published next Monday in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands (BOC), does not include any measure to "close nightlife", and he agreed that it should be allowed to open because of the high degree of vaccination in the Islands. So far, this has only been permitted on islands that are at alert level 1 until 2am.
So when will they be allowed to reopen in all levels?
Most nightlife venues have been closed since March 2020 or August 2020 depending on whether they reopened for a few weeks after lockdown until they were forced to close again, and want to get back working regardless of restrictions on dancing or table service, so that they can start to recuperate some income.
Realistically it will take at least a week from now for publication in the BOC, presentation to Parliament, and get passed by Parliament as a bill, which should be a foregone conclusion, so it’s not time yet to start planning to re-open, but that light at the end of the tunnel has certainly got bigger and is shining brighter!
