Lately in Spain, things have not been going so well. Even the government’s efforts to improve the numbers by not updating statistics on the weekends have not been able to hide the gloomy truth.
Given the Spanish cultural mindset of “carpe diem”, not to mention the nationwide adherence to the dictum, “eat, drink, and be merry”, this outcome was predictable. Nevertheless, it is still somewhat disappointing to observe the widespread temporal amnesia that currently afflicts much of the general population.
Spain is composed of 17 regions, three of which have their own language. To a greater or lesser extent, Cataluña, the Basque Country, and Galicia conspire and aspire to a state of independence in the not-so-distant future. However, this vision of independence is relative, such as when teenage offspring move out of the family home but expect their parents to pay their rent in exchange for the relief of not having them around.
As we all are aware, when the pandemic hit last March, the situation became so desperate that President Pedro Sanchez was obliged to declare a State of Alarm. This meant that regional governments had to take their orders from the central government. All regions in Spain were obliged to do the same thing and coordinate their actions with Madrid. After a somewhat dodgy start, this drastic measure eventually gave positive results.
Even those of us who criticize the government have to admit that it finally worked. For whatever reason, the president did not shrug off his obligations and suggest that the pandemic was a hoax or that it would simply disappear. Nor did he claim that it was not his responsibility, and whine that there was nothing that he could do about it.
He did not say that fighting Covid-19 was the individual responsibility of each region and go off to fry other fish that were more in line with his own political interests. If indeed he had allowed every region do its own thing, the situation would have degenerated into chaos because viruses do not respect borders.
Instead, all regions were obliged to impose the same restrictions despite gloomy mutterings from the Basque Country and Cataluña, who claimed that Spain had regressed into a dictatorship. Nevertheless, there were no protests in the streets. Too many people were dying for the population to get out their (figurative) guns. (Real guns in Spanish households are a rarity.)
The State of Alarm finally worked. The death rate dropped spectacularly. The stacks of coffins gradually began to disappear. In fact, the last 59 (unclaimed) bodies from that dark period have recently been put to rest in a small corner of the cemetery, courtesy of the Community of Madrid, who paid for each individual burial. There were no mass graves, as occurred in New York.
Eventually, the State of Alarm was lifted, and the regional governments regained the authority that they had temporarily lost. Now the responsibility of controlling new outbreaks has once again fallen on the shoulders of governors and mayors. Each region is doing its own thing, rather like the current strategy in the USA.
And so almost every region has thrown caution to the winds because the populace was suffering from confinement fatigue. Hotels, discotheques, bars, and restaurants wanted to get swinging again and try to recover their losses. Young people wished to party and to drink themselves into a stupor.
In Navarre, for the first time since the Spanish Civil War, there was no running of the bulls, but that did not matter. People decided to informally celebrate anyway. One of the uninvited guests was Covid-19, who crashed the party. Some flat encephalogram with a macabre sense of humor even thought it would be fun to have a soccer game between a team of coronavirus-infected players and another team of uninfected players.
After three months of isolation, families also wanted to forget confinement. They wished to reunite and celebrate. And everyone did. They forgot that the virus was still around. Each region thought that it could return to normal and carry on as usual. But they were wrong.
Outbreaks began popping up, one after another (360 as of this morning). Regional governments, many of whom do not have sufficient resources for contact tracing, are now engaged in playing Whack-a-Virus (“The Coronavirus Carnival”, www.timesofcoronavirus.com). Selective restrictions do not seem to be working because it is only possible to fight a pandemic if the country works together as one nation, not as a dystopian balkanized bedlam (i.e. the USA).
Despite the fact that everyone in Spain wears a mask (non-mask wearers are ridiculed), Covid-19 is rapidly advancing in the Basque Country, Aragon, and Cataluña, and slowly progressing elsewhere. Largely thanks to their geography, the places in Spain that are doing the best are the Baleares, Canary Islands, and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the North African coast. But hospitals are gradually filling up again. Unfortunately, people travel from one region to another, especially in the summer, and they carry their germs with them.
Even though new infections were below 300 early this month, in the last week, the daily average has topped 2000, and, as in many places, experts say the real figure is higher, with many cases going undetected. It is not necessary to have a degree in Virology to see what is happening.
So this weekend, without previous warning, the British government abruptly imposed a quarantine on anyone arriving from Spain (with the exception of the Real Madrid soccer team). This was quite a blow to tourism in Spain since a very high percentage of tourists here are from the United Kingdom, and they spend a lot of money when they are on vacation (143 euros per diem). Since the quarantine happened from one day to the next, it came as a surprise to many Britons peacefully getting a suntan on the beach in Mallorca or Lanzarote.
Those interviewed claim that they feel safer in Spain than they do in the UK since everyone here wears a mask, and all establishments are obliged to disinfect premises between clients. However, an important charter airline has canceled all flights to peninsular Spain. This has left many disgruntled Britons without beach, sun, and sangria.
British tourists who are already here are calling their employers to tell them that they will be unable to go to work after returning because they must spend 14 days at home. Most will not be paid during the obligatory quarantine. (“The Daily Mirror” has had a field day with all of this.)
This is not to say that the quarantine is not justified. Indeed, it would be coherent if it were also accompanied by other measures that were geared to improve the situation in the UK from within. Paradoxically, despite the spike in cases, many areas of Spain are still in better shape than the British Isles.
However, the British government also has economic worries, and Boris Johnson would prefer for people to vacation in the UK. England also has a certain history of blaming many of its ills on foreigners and immigrants, when Britons (like Spaniards and Americans) are quite capable of singlehandedly making a mess of their country with little or no help from the outside.
England’s coronavirus infection and death rates seem to indicate that it has a long way to go before it can do a victory dance. So, once again, it is a question of the pot and the kettle, and of determining shades of blackness.
