Spain soon to be tougher place to smoke

MADRID - Spain, famed for its smoke-filled bars, corner cafes and restaurants, set the stage yesterday for a tough new anti-smoking law that will rid the country of its dubious status as one of Western Europe's easiest places to light up.

The bill passed by parliamentary commission calls for transforming all bars and restaurants into no-smoking zones, bringing Spain in line with the European Union's strictest anti-smoking nations and many U.S. states. It's expected to pass the Senate and become law on Jan. 2.

The law will make Spain a tougher place to smoke than many other European countries where bars and restaurants are still allowed to have smoking sections, and will prohibit smoking in outdoor places such as playgrounds and the grounds of schools and hospitals.

The current law put in place in 2006 prohibits smoking in the workplace. But that law permitted owners of most bars and cafes to decide on their own whether to allow smoking - and almost all ended up doing so.

Those bars and cafes will lose the privilege, and larger restaurants will have to get rid of smoking sections. Officials predict thousands of lives now lost to secondhand smoke will be saved.

"I think the new law is good, especially if it helps us keep healthy," said Puri De Arcos, 33, as she puffed away in a park square. "But I think it is too radical, banning smoking in discos, for example."

Bar and restaurant owners had hoped to win an exception allowing them to construct hermetically sealed smoking sections, but the parliamentary commission voted down that option. Hotels will be allowed to set aside 30 percent of the rooms for smokers.

The bill endorsed by the governing Socialist Party next goes for debate in the Senate where approval is likely.

The only concession owners of smoke-filled establishments got was for the law to take effect on Jan. 2, instead of a day earlier, the peak of the weeklong spell of Christmas and New Year's festivities.