Health Crisis Management in Spain and Mexico

The COVID-19 pandemic declared in 2020 revealed not only that the measures adopted for managing a health crisis had not been significantly modernized, but also that the legal framework supporting these measures had evolved to an even lesser extent, focusing more on the dangers posed by violent human acts rather than infectious agents. Therefore, this paper analyzes the exceptional mechanisms regulated in both Spain and Mexico to determine which are appropriate to adopt during a pandemic and under what circumstances. The aim is to provide feedback for improving both legal systems by identifying the existing strengths and weaknesses of the two regulatory frameworks, taking as reference the scenarios for application, declaration procedure, extension, termination, and the controls applied to authorities in each country.