The State of Alarm in Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has not ended yet at the time of writing, has not only caused a health crisis but also a social, economic, political and institutional ones, of unknown proportions due to its intensity and temporal and geographical extension. In order to deal with it, States have made use of the legal instruments available in each legal system and, in some cases, have also reformed them as their deficiencies were noticed in the face of a situation as complex as novel. In Spain, no major reforms have been carried out. The response has come, mainly, from the declaration of the state of alarm and the use of regulations, state and regional, in matters of health and public health. In this paper we focus on the use of the state of alarm and the problems arising from the use of twentieth-century public health legislation that it is not the most appropriate to cope with a pandemic such as the present one.