Students leaving the Covid Hotel in Palma. archive photo. | EFE

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An appeal by the Prosecutors Office over the confinement of hundreds of students at a Covid Hotel in Palma earlier this year has been thrown out by the Supreme Court.

It ruled that the lockdown was a proportionate measure and the only one that could be adopted, given the extension of the outbreak.

The students were on a study trip in Mallorca when they were forced into quarantine last June after a massive outbreak of Covid infections which spread to several Autonomous Communities.

All of the students were allowed to leave Mallorca after a Palma Court ruled that the confinement was not sufficiently justified because there were no details of who had been in close contact with people who were coronavirus positive.

A week ago the Supreme Court endorsed the lockdown, ruling that judges are not epidemiologists.

The Public Prosecutor's Office appealed the TSJIB ruling and criticised the judge who’d annulled it in June, but will now have to formalise it in another way.

Whatever the Court decides in the end, the practical consequences will be zero and the only real interest in the outcome is to establish possible criteria for similar cases in the future.

A criminal investigation has been launched against the General Director of Public Health, Maria Antònia Font after at least three complaints from parents of students accusing her of illegally detaining their children.