⁍ Spanish government faced a backlash on Monday over its plans to put one of Europe’s worst COVID-19 hotspots under a six-month state of emergency.

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⁍ Opposition parties said six months was too long, epidemiologists said this may be too little too late, and some citizens balked at nightly curfews.

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⁍ The nationwide curfew is set to last until at least Nov. 9, while the government said on Sunday it would seek parliament’s approval for the state of emergency to last six months.

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– Spain has become the latest European country to declare a state of emergency as the H1N1 virus continues to spread. The country has seen 1,046,132 cases and the death toll is nearing 35,000, Reuters reports. The government says the state of emergency, which will last six months and allow local authorities to impose curfews and restrictions on movement, will be in place until at least Nov. 9. The country’s total number of cases rose to 1,046,132 as of Friday, while the death toll is nearing 35,000. “The measures in Spain are reactive, dragging our feet, with the feeling that there’s no evaluation of whether they work and that something is done only because others took those steps,” says a political science professor at Madrid’s Carlos III university. The main opposition party, the conservative People’s Party, and the center-right Ciudadanos party say they will back a state of emergency, but not for that long. PP leader Pablo Casado said his party would agree to as much as eight weeks but no more, and with a set of conditions that would include modifying legislation to allow for limits on the movement of people to be decided without needing to resort to a state of emergency.