The enforcement of Covid-19 measures in the Spanish state. The unnecessary use of force and racial prejudice and discrimination by police forces.

State responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have varied. In Spain, as in most countries in Europe and around the world, the government has adopted punitive and coercive measures, which have led to the unlawful use of force by the police to impose lockdown measures on people who did not offer any resistance or constitute a significant threat. Police forces have used excessive and unnecessary force in the enforcement of COVID-19 lockdowns and curfews and clamped down on peaceful protests. Authorities across the world have forcibly evicted people from their home or detained them, all in the name of COVID-19 protection, even though such actions are likely to spread rather than contain the disease. More fundamentally, against the backdrop of fears of contagion, states have used the pandemic as a pretext to introduce laws and policies that violate international law and roll back human rights, including by disproportionately restricting the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression. The pandemic has also been used as pretext for the illegal expulsion of refugees and migrant workers, who have in some instances been scapegoated and blamed for the spread of COVID-19. In Spain, at the beginning, the official formalities were closer to a war than to a pandemic. In the daily press conferences (during six weeks), the main actors were a general from the Army, a senior Guardia Civil officer, a Chief Superintendent of National Police and the Minister of Health. Three uniformed officials talking about, offences, war, soldiers and police reports that only left a small room for the health authorities. Later on this speech was progressively lowered, the uniforms vanished from the press conferences and offences and penalties had a more modest presence in public speeches. During the second and third waves the role of legal threats, police reports have been a bit more sensible than before, showing clearly that their role is collateral, not nuclear, the country is facing a pandemic not a security problem. The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to the different measures adopted by the Spanish government and their implementation by the subnational governments. From this starting point, it will discuss the role of the police and their disproportionate use of force and the racial prejudice and discrimination in the enforcement of COVID-19 related standards towards refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.