Spain locks down town of 32,000 for two weeks

ARANDA DE DUERO, Spain: Spanish authorities have ordered about 32,000 people into lockdown in the central riverside town of Aranda del Duero in a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Known for its vineyards, Aranda del Duero residents will find their movements restricted to the absolute minimum and be barred from entering or leaving the town which lies 150 kilometres (90 miles) north of Madrid,

The move comes just six weeks after a nationwide easing of such measures. Other areas have already put local lockdowns in place, including in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Aragon regions.

Spain has so far been one of the countries worst affected by the pandemic, with 310,000 registered infections and 28,500 deaths. An AFP photographer saw police setting up checkpoints around Aranda del Duero, which will remain in lockdown for at least two weeks.

Officers will check ID documents of those entering and prevent anyone from leaving without a valid reason. The photographer saw that several goods trucks were able to enter the town.

"It’s all calm here, of course we’re a little afraid. Some shops have closed but overall it seems almost like a normal day," clothes shop worker Maria Jose Fernandez told AFP by phone. "You can see that people’s morale has suffered, because we don’t know what’s going to happen."

Nationwide, Spain has added 19,405 new coronavirus cases in the past week, but the health ministry says the country is not entering a second wave of the pandemic. Among regions, Catalonia was the worst hit in the past seven days with 5,100 cases, while neighbouring Aragon recorded 4,100.

But with 312 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, Aragon is a greater cause for concern in terms of the infection rate. Local authorities have imposed different forms of lockdown, with Barcelona requesting residents not to leave their homes while Aranda del Duero citizens face police checks.

Spain’s nationwide lockdown lasted from mid-March until June 21, but the government has ruled out re-imposing it across the country.Meanwhile, media redundancies, partial layoffs and managerial wage cuts are on the rise as advertising markets implode, despite customers showing an ever stronger appetite for information on the coronavirus crisis. In Britain, The Guardian announced 180 redundancies in response to tumbling ad revenues, while The Economist magazine has said it is laying off 90 people.

US media have likewise not been immune to the market consequences of the crisis. Conde Nast, publisher of the likes of Vogue, Wired and The New Yorker, has announced it is laying off 100 of its 6,000 staff.

Vox Media, home of The Verge and New York Magazine, has said 72 of its employees will be laid off or furloughed. The New York Times has laid off 68 employees from its sales teams. The McClatchy group, which publishes some 20 newspapers including the Miami Herald, was sold to an investment fund, Chatham, after going into receivership.

According to a New York Times analysis, the pandemic has seen 36,000 media workers either laid off, furloughed or forced to take a wage cut in a sector which had already endured years of belt tightening. More than 50 local newsrooms across the United States, some of which had been operating for over a century, have been shuttered, according to a list updated by the Poynter site.

In France, the already fragile regional daily La Marseillaise was hit hard by the lockdown and placed in judicial liquidation. Le Parisien is planning to cut 30 jobs and its regional editions.

Anticipating three years of losses, the sports daily L’Equipe reduced its employees’ salaries and days off, after many of the world’s sporting competitions sat idle for months.

Online news portals are also struggling.

The Vice Media group is to fire 55 US-based and 100 foreign-based staff, according to a note sent by the group’s CEO Nancy Dubac to employees, which was published by US media.

Beyond the problems caused by the coronavirus crisis, she also accused media tech platforms of "not just taking a larger slice of the pie, but almost the whole pie," threatening online news streams and thousands of journalists’ jobs.

News and entertainment site Buzzfeed announced in March it was cutting salaries by between five and 25 percent and would also end coverage of news in Britain and Australia, having already left France.

For some media, the coronavirus crisis is a chance to speed up the transition to a more stable, subscription-based publishing model.

That is the case of financial news provider Quartz, whose Japanese owner Uzabase says it plans to cut some 40 percent of staff, mainly advertising posts.

Broadcasting has not escaped the crisis cull. In Britain, the BBC has announced it will cut 520 jobs out of a total of 6,000 employees, mainly in its regional programmes. Journalists will cover fewer stories and work in centralised teams instead of focusing on a particular programme, the BBC news director said.

In the United States, NBCUniversal has lopped 20 percent off top salaries, while the giant ViacomCBS plans to lay off 10 percent of its 35,000 employees, in television production as well as in its amusement parks, according to Bloomberg. In France, BFMTV/RMC has announced plans to slash its use of freelancers and consultants.