Students leaving the Covid Hotel in Palma. | M. À. Cañellas

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Students who were forced to stay in a Covid Hotel in Palma after a huge coronavirus outbreak are on their way home after a court ruled that 181 of them who had tested negative could leave the hotel.

“The Government cannot substantiate a forced confinement due to a potential diagnosis of infection, especially when no criterion has even been established about the relationship of the positive with the rest,” said the judge, but not everyone is happy with the ruling.

"The judge has not taken into account the social reality, we are not satisfied and we will ask the judge for clarification,” said Councillor Pedro Yllanes.

Police outside Covid Hotel in Palma.

Private security and National Police Officers were posted at the hotel doors while monitors, dressed in blue T-shirts, guided the students out of the building.

Students taking taxi from Covid Hotel in Palma.

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Some students took taxis to the airport where they boarded planes to Seville and Bilbao.

Students boarding bus at Covid Hotel in Palma.

The rest were taken by bus to the port and will board a ferry to Valencia this morning.

The Authorities decided to send most of the students home by boat because it’s “easier to make a bubble group inside a boat than inside a plane," said Minister Mercedes Garrido.

Students boarding bus at Covid Hotel in Palma.

Representatives from the Autonomous Communities that the students live in will collect them from the port when the boat arrives in Valencia.

51 other students who tested positive for coronavirus will have to stay at the Covid Hotel and the Government has been told to give the court an update on their condition every five days.