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AP, Huffington PostMADRID — Tapas bars – the noisy and bustling Spanish success story that combined delicious morsels with good wine and often a cloud of cigarette smoke – are now smoke-free. So are restaurants, discos, casinos, airports and even some outdoor spaces.
Spain on Sunday introduced an anti-smoking law that is likely to turn the EU's fourth largest tobacco producer from a cigarette-friendly land abounding with smoky bars and restaurants, into one of Europe's most stringently smokeless.
The law prohibits lighting up in enclosed public places, although hotels are allowed to reserve 30 percent of their rooms for smokers. In a particularly tough measure, outside smoking is banned in open-air children's playgrounds – even those inside parks – and at access points to schools and hospitals. "It's a step that should have been taken four years ago, but I think the government got cold feet," said bakery worker Inma Amantes Ramos, 29.
Parliament approved an anti-smoking law in 2006 that prohibited smoking in the workplace but allowed bar and restaurant owners with premises under 100 square meters (1,100 square feet) to decide whether to allow smoking or not – and almost all permitted it.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/02/spain-enacts-tough-antism_n_803342.html