State of Alarm

Abstract

State of alarm is one of the three states of emergency, together with the state of emergency and the state of siege, provided by the Spanish Constitution, scarcely mentioned in comparative constitutional law. It is declared by the Government in cases of natural disasters, health or technological crises, when public essential services are paralysed and certain requirements are met, or when there is shortage of goods of primary necessity. The decree declaring the state of alarm places all security forces (including those regional and local) and all administrative personnel under the authority of the national government –or the President of a Region–. The state of alarm provides the basis to adopt extraordinary measures, to a proportionate and necessary extent, to address the crisis –excluding those, which consist in suspension of the fundamental rights enshrined in article 55.1 of the Constitution: state of alarm only entails fundamental rights to be limited, but not suspended. These measures, therefore, may refer to certain restrictions of freedom of movement and circulation, requisition of necessary goods and imposition of compulsory personal services, purchasing primary goods limitation or restriction in the use of public essential services –which do not exceed the scope of the ordinary executive power–. The present study carries out an analysis of the constitutional and legal framework of the state of alarm, its origins and meaning from an historical, political and comparative law point of view. It also provides a critical view of both decrees declaring the state of alarm, in 2010 in response to the closing of the Spanish air space due to the massive abandon of their obligations by the air traffic controllers and in 2020, in order to face the coronavirus COVID-19 global pandemic crisis, bearing in mind the constitutional requirements to limitation or suspension of fundamental rights.