Spain’s Prime Minister and the whole Governement have declared the Alarm status in ALL SPAIN.
Some activators seem to be living inside a buble, not noticing that it is forbidden to go out from home.
All people in Spain should remain confined at home and the only reasons allowing people to leave home are:
1- Acquisition of food, pharmacy and first necessity products.
2- Attending to sanitary centers, services and facilities.
3- Work.
4- Return to home.
5- Asistance and care to elderly, youngs, dependants, handicapped or specially vulnerable people.
6- Going to financial and insurance entities.
7- For major necessity reasons.
8- Any other activity of similar essence, which shal be made individually, except when accompanying handicapped people or any other justified reason.
In spite of all the media talking about this all the time, I’ve seen these activations spotted:
Question: shall these activations be valid?
I doubt it, but I’d like to see a clear statement from the MT about it.
Thanks in advance.
73,
My personal opinion is that this should be “policed” by the national authorities in EA and social pressure from within the EA community - but not by the remote SOTA MT.
we have nearly similar situation here in OE (all associations, OE1 to OE9) apart from now, 15/03/2020.
It is not allowed furthermore to leave home, except for urgent reasons (SOTA ?).
Please listen/read more detailed information in Radio/TV/Newspapers.
The MT cannot be expected to know what restrictions occur for summits or general access in every Association in SOTA. This is what the AM is for. If the AM advises the MT that a restriction has been ignored then the MT can investigate further and apply appropriate sanctions if necessary.
By means of this thread and the information from the Spanish newspapers I posted yesterday in the thread “Social distance”, the MT and the whole SOTA community have been made aware of the prohibition IN ALL SPAIN to leave home except for few exceptions among which going to the top of mountain for a SOTA activation is not listed. The Royal decree has been published and is fully applicable from today. The Spanish police corps are already forcing people to go and stay home, as well as sanctioning those not doing it. Sanctions can go from 600 to 60K € and even one year of prision depending on the gravity of the infraction.
We saw recently how an activation in EA8 by Steve G1INK was invalid because a special authorisation was required to hike that mountain and it hadn’t been properly obtained. Correct!
If a Royal decree is published by the Spanish government under which no people are authorised to leave home in all Spain over the next 15 days, how could anyone go out to a mountain top for a SOTA activation and pretend such activation to be valid, when that activator has clearly violated the law and he/she is clearly liable to receive a sanction from the authorities?
There’s nothing to be policed by the MT.
SOTA activations shouldn’t be valid as long as this status of alarm persists in Spain, just because the transport of the activator him/herself to the summit is something forbidden by the law right now.
73,
Guru
P.D. and Chris seems to be still living in his personal bubble fully unaware of what’s going on in the World and around him:
Does the royal decree also say that tourist holiday makers need to stay in their hotels? Just wondering as with all messages in a foriegn language it “may be” that HB9CYV had not understood the severity of the situation and does he need to interpret the “go home and stay in your home” as an order to leave the country? No sarcasm here - this is a real issue and without clear rules a foreigner in another country can be lost for correct information. One could say that it’s better for him to be out in the open on a hilltop than in a hotel close to lots of other people!
Here in Germany, we are closing the borders to Switzerland, Austria and France tomorrow morning. At the moment, there is no “lock-down” and I plan to be out on at least two summits tomorrow unless this changes.
Hi Ed,
After rereading again the royal decree, I don’t see anything specific to tourists.
One of the exceptions to remaining home is: Retorno al lugar de residencia habitual.
This means return to the usual residency.
In the case of the tourists they may interpret as return to their hotels or return to their homes. If they return to their hotels, they should remain there and only leave it to travel back to their homes.
I don’t know if Chris is or not aware of this royal decree, but I’m pretty sure the hotel will have informed all their guests.
In any case, ignorance or the fact of not been aware of the laws does not exempt from compliance.
73,
What could we have done? Given official information about the legality of going out and activating I suppose we could remove the EA Associations from the activator logging pages, and manually inspect the database and delete any illicit EA activations from time to time, and if other countries go into similar lock downs we could do the same for them. To do this sort of thing we would need to be up to date with the situation in all our Associations, and this is not easy.
Hi Brian,
I don’t think the SOTA MT should have already done anything, but I think these 2 actions to be done ASAP the 1st one and whenever you can, the second one, would help make things clearer and contribute to preserve our health and compliance to the laws:
an official statement about the invalidity of the activations made in all Spain, i.e. EA, EA6, EA8 and EA9 during the mentionned period of time.
the removal from the database of any possible EA activation (possibly the chases too) being uploaded to the database as long as they took place in the mentionned period of time.
Hi everyone
When the state of alarm was declared in Spain (day 14). I was in the town of Puebla de Don Fadrique activating EA7 / GR-021. I spent the night in this town, today the 15th and back home, I decided to activate EA7 / GR-082. On the way back, I had two stops from the Police. I had no problem, since it was a return to my house.
Friend Guru, it was very difficult for me to explain all this to you in CW, in the contact that we had from EA7 / GR-082 Moralejo.
If the MT considers that the activation of EA7 / GR-082 is not valid, I have no problem canceling it.
I apologize if I have been able to disturb someone.
When I contacted you and asked you to check validity of your activation, I noted you were on EA7/GR-082, not the Moralejo 078 you mentionned in your post.
In any case, I’ll not update my chase to the database.
We all need to be extremely careful and try to preserve ourselves, thus protecting all people around us, particularly you, Dani, due to your Mother being among the most vulnerable people in these circumstances.
My best wishes of good luck.
73,
Dani, that’s up to you, not MT. The MT has no role in enforcing social isolation in another country. If you consider your activation invalid due to the emergency laws in your country, then please remove it. But that is not a matter for SOTA MT.
In todays announcement in the parlament our chancellor in OE even gave the example about taking a walk (“die Beine vertreten”) and confirmed that taking a walk is okay if one goes solo or with the people that are in the same household.
The risk and it was brought up by Martin @OE5REO in our SOTA QSO today is the fact that if you have a car accident or hiking accident there might be not enough hospital capacity.
So I would say it is not forbitten in OE but a social responsibility. I will very carefully decide what and how to spend the following weekends.
Dani satisfied the police when they stopped him because he was driving on the road and explained he was driving back home. This is permitted.
The police didn’t stop Dani while he was hiking to the mountain top. Dani didn’t tell the police he would make a pause in his jouney home to hike to a mountain top for a SOTA activation.
No police stopped Steve G1INK to request the permission needed to hike to EA8/FU-005, but even though you (the MT) considered such activation invalid. What’s the difference to consider activations in Spain valid under a general royal decree forbidding explicitly leaving home to go anywhere except for the few mentionned exceptions?
Correct - and a guest to a country must follow that countries laws and rules.
Given the size of the tourist industry in Spain I find it surprising that what tourists should do, wasn’t included in the decree but at the moment everything is so unpredictable, it’s the kind of thing that will get easily missed.
Lets hope this all passes sooner rather than later.
Correct, but it was a member of the MT who made Steve aware of such permission need.
I’d find equivalent, in the case we are discussing in this thread, an official statement from the MT making clear that SOTA activations in Spain will not be valid during the alarm status period.
If some activators still persist and upload their activations to the database, my opinion is that the MT should delete them.
And I would be grateful in the sake of myself and all the people fighting hard against this virus.
