Chartered boat to bring quarantined students back to Spain

A chartered boat will leave Mallorca this morning to bring some 200 students who were quarantined on the island back to mainland Spain.
The ship will dock at the Port of Valencia and students are expected to be bused back to autonomous communities. Roughly 200 students are expected to be onboard, most of them are from Andalucia.
More than a dozen students have already left and took a flight home to Bilbao, La Sexta reported.
Minister Mercedes Garrido pleaded with the students to stay.
“We ask and recommend that you accept the option of staying to finish the quarantine,” she said on June 30.
The move comes after a judge ruled on June 30 against keeping quarantined students in Mallorca under hotel confinement if they are proven to be free of Covid-19.
Some 249 students have been under 24-hour surveillance in the Hotel Palma Bellvor in Mallorca since last week.
Many complained that even though they had tested negative for Covid-19 they were being held against their will.
On June 29, a Spanish court threw out 103 habeas corpus appeals lodged by parents demanding their release to quarantine at home. The Litigation Court No. 3 of Palma de Mallorca yesterday issued an order saying that only young people who have tested positive for Covid-19 and could prove they have not been in close contact with an infected peer may be confined.
The court ruled that confining Covid negative students was a fundamental breach of their rights.
More than 1,850 cases of Covid-19 in Spain have been linked to end-of-year trips by celebrating school leavers.

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