The controversial advertisement of the Barcelona Restaurant Guild against the anti-smoking law: "Don't they have more important matters to deal with?"

"The Spanish healthcare system is on the verge of collapse, but the [Health] Ministry is dedicated to pursuing smokers as if they were criminals," the Barcelona Restaurant Guild asserted on its social media on November 5 to criticize the anti-smoking law reform that would ban smoking on terraces.

The most controversial point, however, has been the video that accompanied the post: an advertisement of just over two minutes, in which renowned actors such as David Solanas, Cristina Plazas, and Pep Sais ridicule the Minister of Health, Mónica García, and the anti-smoking law. Specifically, the video recreates a dystopian scenario where an alleged Ministry of Health team tracks a young man who tries to smoke on a terrace, but who is ultimately intercepted by secret government authorities.

The video, made with a dramatic tone and filmed as if it were a Hollywood action movie, also takes the opportunity to criticize the alleged lack of concern by the Ministry of Health for other problems in the healthcare system. "Let them wait!", states the character of Plazas with a laugh when told he has to attend different meetings to discuss the problems of hospital waiting lists or the working conditions of healthcare workers.

In this sense, the Restaurant Guild has referred to the fact of smoking on terraces as a "trivial matter" with which "public authorities" like the Ministry of Health are obsessed. "At what point did they think that we citizens have ceased to be adults, capable of making our own decisions?", the entity has questioned.

The controversy on social media

The responses to the announcement did not take long. Mònica García herself, for example, did not hesitate to question the position of the Restaurant Guild. "Years ago they told us that stopping smoking inside bars would end the hospitality industry. It didn't happen. Now they tell us that stopping smoking on terraces will end the hospitality industry. It won't happen," she assured in a post on X.

Thus, García criticized the entity's message of placing "the right to breathe clean air" above the right to smoke. "What is impossible to get used to is the fact that there are still those who campaign in favor of a business that causes 50,000 deaths a year and costs our public health system billions of euros," the minister stated.

Among other figures who have harshly criticized the announcement by the Barcelona Restaurant Guild is the famous chef Maria Nicolau, who has referred to the entity as the "National Rifle Association", or even the spokesperson for the Republican Left of Catalonia in the Horta-Guinardó district of Barcelona, Laura Pi, who has insisted that the entity should "worry more about the working conditions of the sector and less about defending smoke on terraces".