Galicia bans smoking in public streets from Thursday

Galicia bans smoking in public streets and extends nighttime closures

From this Thursday, lighting a cigarette in public spaces in Galicia is a punishable offense. The Xunta announced the street smoking ban this Wednesday, along with extending nighttime closures to new areas and restricting visits from family and friends in hospitals. The regional president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, presented it as a way to contain the cobi19. Underlying the announcement is a disputed thesis: some argue that smokers exhale more particles and over greater distances, and therefore spread the bicho more.

What exactly does the Xunta de Galicia prohibit?

The restriction covers tobacco consumption in public spaces. Terraces can be used—sitting, having a drink—but smoking is not allowed there either. The practical result is that smoking outdoors in Galicia is, de facto, outside the law. Along with this measure, the regional government is extending nighttime closures to areas that had so far escaped them and limiting visits in hospitals.

The battery of measures comes amid the hangover from summer restrictions. First, mandatory masks on the street regardless of distance, then selective nighttime closures, and now tobacco is banned outdoors. Each announcement was presented separately, as a technical adjustment, but the cumulative effect, as some participants stress, is that the list of things you cannot do on the street grows every two weeks.

Smoke-free terraces: the blow the hospitality industry antiestéticars

The hospitality sector bears the weight of each new restriction. During previous months, according to participants, bars had made a notable effort to expand terraces and buy heaters to avoid losing customers, to the point that in winter there were almost more people outside than inside. The terrace became the business's refuge and, incidentally, the only place where smokers could light up without leaving the bar.

That balance is now broken. If smoking is not allowed on the terrace, smokers who went out for a drink lose their main incentive to choose a bar with outdoor seating over another. The sector's most pessimistic reading speaks directly of more ruin for hospitality, a business already hit by closures and capacity limits. Smoking in the street is banned under any concept: no sidewalk, corner, or bench serves as an escape.

Smokers and cobi19: the unproven hypothesis

At the time of the measure, an uncomfortable idea was circulating strongly: that smokers were less likely to get infected. It was based on observations from the early months of the pandemic, when some patient lists showed a lower percentage of smokers than the habit has in the general population. From that data, it was jumped to the hypothesis that some component of tobacco—nicotine, it was said—could inhibit the reaction the bicho needs to enter cells.

None of these explanations have conclusive studies or a proven mechanism. Turning a conjecture into certainty is the error that several participants reproach public officials for. A restriction of rights and freedoms requires a solid basis, not a convenient suspicion.

56,000 deaths from tobacco versus 28,000 from cobi19

Tobacco caused more than 56,000 deaths in Spain in a single year. The cobi19 had claimed about 28,000 lives as of the date of this discussion. The two figures together support the most repeated health argument against the logic of the ban: if the criterion were saving lives, tobacco would have required intervention much earlier than the bicho.

Some add the economic cost. It is claimed that tobacco costs the State more than 4,000 million euros per year, an amount that coexists with the revenue it generates and with the question of why sales have not been banned if the problem is public health. Against that reasoning, it is pointed out in the debate that smoking is a harm each person inflicts on themselves, while the bicho is transmitted to third parties. The distinction is not trivial, though it does not resolve why the street is chosen and not the tobacconist.

From Galicia to the rest of Spain: the autonomous fuse

Galicia and the Basque Country were already the first communities to impose mandatory masks outdoors, and some see Galicia repeating as a trailblazer. The sequence, according to participants trinc the thread, resembles administrative contagion: one community launches the measure, the rest wait a few days, and end up copying it to avoid falling behind in firmness.

The versions circulating all point in the same direction. Asturias would already be moving papers to apply a similar ban, the Valencian Community is repeatedly mentioned, and in the Canary Islands the possibility of extending it to the coast is being studied. The most widespread prediction is that in less than two weeks tobacco will be banned throughout Spain, and then it will be the turn of other customs. It is the same mechanics already seen with masks: first one autonomous community, then the rest, finally a common pattern.

Can an autonomous community ban smoking in public spaces?

It remains to be seen where the jurisdictional limit lies. Some argue that a community cannot legislate on something that affects fundamental rights and freedoms, and that the rule would be challengeable in court, even before European human rights bodies.

On the first day of enforcement, moreover, reports point to irregular compliance and a good dose of indifference. The feeling left by many messages is the opposite of what the Xunta sought: the more that is prohibited, the less it is obeyed. With this picture, the point where the analysis gets stuck is the same as in each previous restriction. Today it is tobacco, tomorrow it will be something else, and no one knows what is next or how much of this countdown remains.