In Spain, today
(Saturday) is the big day when at long last, we will be permitted to go out for
a stroll or do exercise. For this purpose, the government has established a set
of rules.
The population
has been divided into the following categories: (1) athletes; (2) old people
(> 70 years old); (3) invalids; (4) children (< 13 years old); (5)
parents; (6) anyone else (14- 70 years old).
Depending on the
group that we happen to belong to, we are allowed to exercise/take a walk up to
one kilometer from our residence. The following time slots have been
established for each category.
• 6:00-10:00 for
athletes and anyone else
• 10:00-12:00 for
old people and invalids
• 12:00-19:00
for children (accompanied by one parent)
• 19:00-20:00
for old people and invalids
• 20:00-23:00
for athletes and anyone else
From 23:00 -6:00
no one is allowed out except if they work the nightshift at a hospital or are a
garbage collector. All night owls are thus out of luck. People have the right
to one hour of exercise or walking per day.
However, if you
are old, the one-hour limit does not apply. Since the elderly are a species in
extinction, we can walk all we want within our time slot. We will probably not
be able to get very far anyway.
All of these
regulations have transformed a fairly straightforward activity into something
extraordinarily complex. Since there are people who belong to various categories,
no one knows if they can go out more than once a day or whether they have to
choose one of their possible roles (athlete, parent, anyone else, etc.).
I am not even
going to try to explain all of this to Mr. and Mrs. Neanderthal, who will just
have to figure things out for themselves.
The police claim
that they are going to monitor this mess and make sure that the time-slots are
respected. However, everyone knows that this is a pleasant fiction (unless
Balcony Nazis are deputized). One of our various ministers went on television
and said that he had faith that people would obey the rules and would be
responsible without the police checking up on them.
However, this
assertion is proof that he is delusional or at best, is suffering from a
violent attack of acute optimism. I will explain why this cannot possibly work
in Spain.
When I went to
college in the USA, the University of North Carolina had an honor system.
Professors would hand out bluebooks, walk out of the classroom, and return two
hours later. No one monitored the exam because students were on their honor not
to copy. When we finished the exam, we would sign a pledge declaring on our
honor that we had not copied nor had seen anyone else copy. This seemed to
work, at least at UNC.
I never knew
anyone who copied during an exam though I believe that one of my brother’s
disreputable acquaintances was expelled for that reason. Expulsion was the
penalty for copying in exams.
Over the years,
I have repeated this story to my students in Spain. Their faces always reflect
total incredulity. Firstly, they cannot believe that American students did not
copy under such favorable circumstances; Secondly, they think that expulsion
from the university is an excessively harsh penalty for doing something so
utterly understandable.
In Spain, every
university student has the sacred right to copy if he/she can get away with it.
Moreover, students here would shave off their eyebrows ratting on a classmate
for copying. So, one of the first things that I learned when I began teaching
here was that there was no honor system. Copying was a sport, and regarded as
normal.
Over the years,
I have become rather good at catching at copiers and still have a collection of
crib sheets. (One of them is an exquisite toothpick parchment scroll with English
phrasal verbs made by a nun who was once a student of mine.)
During the exam,
those who want to copy watch the teacher more than their exam paper. Good
students always sit in the front row whereas the bad ones tend to sit towards
the back near their equally brainless friends so as to be able to copy from
each other. Even when I allowed them to copy, this conspiracy of dunces was
never successful and all participants inevitably failed the exam.
So, all this
means that copying is a sport, and the penalty is usually a slap on the wrist.
Similarly, outwitting authority here is in the nature of a game that everyone
tries to play more or less successfully.
The new game
will involve people running, walking, or strolling within the wrong timeslot.
People will want to see each other again, walk together, and talk face-to-face.
People in Mediterranean countries are gregarious. Everyone will want to make
their time in the sun last as long as possible now that lockdown seems to be
gradually ending. They believe the coronavirus has disappeared. The problem is
that it hasn’t.
I have told my
grocery line club this, and they do not believe me. They are fed up with dire
predictions of gloom and doom, and have accused me of being a wet blanket.
However, I am used to their denial of reality. Since they have stopped watching
or reading the news, there are things that they cannot know.
For example,
Germany significantly eased restrictions last week. Their statistics had
improved. They were not hit as hard as other European countries, perhaps
because they are more efficient or obedient, or perhaps because of the way that
they counted their coronavirus deaths. Germany has thus allowed shops of up to
800sq m to open as well as larger bicycle shops and bookshops. This has caused
the population to mingle.
Mingling in
Germany should not be a problem mostly because German mingling is extremely
tepid and anemic. It is not like Spanish mingling. (In Spain, people really
know how to mingle.)
However, even
decaffeinated German mingling has caused their R number (rate of virus
reproduction) to spike for three days in a row (though today it has once again
gone down a bit). The government is rethinking whether to lift any more
restrictions. Apparently, the virus did not pack up its marbles and go home. Covid-19
is still in the game.
