Owners and managers of Portugal’s bars and discotheques, festival promoters and similarare up in arms today after the tacit acceptance by authorities of huge throngs of football fans outside the Alvalade Stadium last night. If such proximity is allowed – particularly when many of the fans were not wearing masks – why is their sector still ‘forbidden’ from operating. The sector accuses authorities of double standards and is demanding explanations. Álvaro Covões of the association of promoters of events and festivals told SIC television news that last night’s multitude in Lisbon “was a real pilot test. If in two weeks time the incidence of contagions is the same everything should reopen: shows, festivals, restaurants with full timetables, unlimited commerce, football, everything.”
