Barcelona reduces beach access to battle COVID clusters in Catalonia

Barcelona will reduce access to its beaches by 15% to avoid overcrowding and to control the spread of COVID-19 which is affecting the region of Catalonia, a city hall official said on Tuesday. The measure will reduce the daily number of people on beaches by 8000, from 38,000 to 32,000 people, a Barcelona city hall statement said.

On Friday, Catalonia's regional government urged people to stay at home, stopping short of ordering a lockdown. They ordered restaurants in Barcelona to reduce their capacity and gyms to close, toughening their response to the crisis. Beaches were nevertheless crowded over the weekend as people ignored advise to remain indoors. After registering thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths per day during an early April peak, Spain succeeded in slowing the number of new infections.