The Castalla Town Hall foresees the reopening of the municipal market next Saturday, May 2nd

• The posts will be located in an enclosed area with limited capacity and a single access point to ensure total health safety
• The Council is also considering the possibility of re-establishing the two weekly sessions depending on the response of citizens

Castalla plans to recover its traditional municipal market next Saturday, May 2, from 9 am to 2 pm, and only with food stalls (fruit, vegetables, salted fish, etc). The City Council has changed the usual configuration in which it had been held until last March 14, when it was decreed the State of Alarm for the public health emergency arising from the pandemic Covid-19. The main objective of these changes is to adapt its installation and operation to the new guidelines set by the Generalitat Valenciana. In the resolution, which comes into force on Thursday 30 April, the Ministry of Universal Health and Public Health specifies through a decree the conditions for the opening of markets for non-sedentary (street) sales of basic necessities.

The first change is the location. The posts will be distributed along the streets Colon, Padre Polanco and Paseo Antic Bassa la Vila, next to the municipal park, within a perimeter with controlled access. The mayor of Castalla, Antonio Bernabeu, said that “the intention is to keep the market as close as possible to its traditional location, but respecting the new conditions that we must meet, especially with regard to the separation of stops and therefore customers in line with the rules set by the current health alert.

This closed area will have only one point of entry and exit, in which there will be a janitor or local police officer, responsible for each user who enters the market to wash their hands with hydroalcoholic solution or disinfectant gel. In addition to access control, a limited capacity will be established, in order to comply with the law, which establishes that agglomerations must be controlled, as well as maintaining the safety distance between consumers and employees.

2.5 meters separation between posts
The Councillor for Urban Planning, Raquel Guill, said that “the stalls will have marked the measures and the shifts of the customers to facilitate their location, with a single point of access for buyers. Each stop will have a maximum length of 6 meters and must maintain a separation of 2.5 meters between post and post. Similarly, the distance between traders and consumers must be at least two metres, and all traders must comply with legally established hygiene and social distance measures. In addition, Raquel Guill has confirmed that the Consistory will provide a waste container to each point of sale “to help keep the area clean during and after the day”.

Users who come to the market will also find information signs inside the premises and at each of the stalls with the hygiene and physical distance measures they should know and respect in order to make their purchase safely.

The municipality of Castalla has traditionally held two weekly market sessions, on Tuesdays and Saturdays. For the time being, the service is only restored for the weekend, starting next Saturday, May 2nd. In this sense, Bernabeu has stressed that “we will study the possibility of holding the two weekly sessions again, when it is possible and depending on the citizen’s response to the new measures and the next instructions from the government authorities, both autonomous and central government, for this situation”.