(Bloomberg) --
After more than two months of lockdown, Oscar Fernandez opened his Madrid bar to his first clients -- and an uncertain future.
“Since we’re a family business, every moment we’re shut is lost income,” said Fernandez as he and his wife served breakfasts of tortilla and toasted bread spread with oil and tomato to mask-wearing customers sitting at suitably-distanced tables on his outdoor “terraza.” Their one employee is still off work with coronavirus.
Madrid and Barcelona, Spain’s two biggest cities, on Monday began to emerge from two months of economic hibernation enforced by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez as his government sought to stem a wave of Covid-19 infection that has so far claimed about 29,000 lives. The government expects the economy to shrink 9.2% this year as it reels from the impact of the lockdown.
Fernandez said it would be hard to make a profit with strict rules limiting client numbers to 50% of capacity. To compensate he will now serve customers from 6am to 11pm, a four-hour extension to his usual opening hours.
Sanchez is betting that a carefully-staged phased reopening of activity will allow the economy to get back on to its feet while lowering the risk of harmful new outbreaks of the disease.
Read More: Hospitality Stocks Jump on Spain’s Plan for Tourists’ Return
The Madrid region and the metropolitan area of Barcelona entered the second phase of reduced restrictions on Monday. The rules now allow for meetings of as many as 10 people, for smaller shops to open without prior appointment as well as restricted access to funerals, religious services and gyms.
The third phase, a stage now underway in provinces along Spain’s northern Atlantic coastline, the Canary Islands and parts of Andalusia among other regions, extends access to beaches, shopping malls -- and the interior spaces of restaurants and bars like Fernandez’s.
Spain said on Monday it would remove a quarantine requirement for foreign tourists from July 1. Tourism related stocks including Melia Hotels International SA soared as investors cheered the boost for the key sector of the economy.
Even so, Spaniards will also have to play their part in helping get business back on track, officials said.
“If you want our Madrid, with its commerce and eating out, to return, you also have to come back,” Begona Villacis, the deputy mayor, said on twitter. “It’s time to be tourists in our own city.”
Taking her advice were Lucas Oriol and Rafael Gomez, two 21-year-old students, who took advantage of the more relaxed rules to play a game of chess at a table outside a bar near Real Madrid’s Bernabeu soccer stadium.
Sipping cold beers, the duo said they hoped their decision to come out to play chess would help the bar and the city’s economy.
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