Spain’s El Corte Ingles announces temporary store closures in Madrid & Basque Country

Spain’s department store El Corte Ingles has announced that it will temporarily be closing its stores across Madrid and the Basque country. However, its supermarket chains, including Supercor, will remain open.

For now El Corte Ingles says that the temporary closures only apply to its stores in Madrid and the Basque country, as they are the two communities most affected by the Coronavirus. However, several of its employees on the Costa and other regions believe that this move will be extended to the rest of the country in the next few days. The temporary closure of all its stores could affect around 80,000 of its employees.

The company has also confirmed that it has reinforced and stepped up its digital and online services so customers can order online and either collect groceries from the parking area of its stores, or have ordered goods delivered directly to their homes.

Several other fashion retailers have also announced the temporarily closure of their stores across Spain from today to help contain the Coronavirus. The Inditex Group – which includes fashion retailers such as Zara, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Pull & Bear, Berksha, amongst others – has confirmed that it will temporarily close around 1,500 of its stores across the country.

The Tandem Group, which owns brands such as Cortefiel, Springfield, Women’s secrets and Fifty, has also announced that it has made the ‘socially responsible’ decision to temporarily close its stores across the country until further notice, as has Swedish-owned H&M.

These temporary closures follow the Prime Minister’s ‘state of emergency’ announcement yesterday, to help deal with the country’s health crises, caused by the Coronavirus.