Life Under Lockdown
I’d taken the dog down, too, and the children, since they hadn’t been outside in days. It was midnight—proper after we finished dinner—and I figured they could carry a trash bag and get a breath of air. The dog had barely peed when the patrol automotive did a U-flip, blue lights flashing. I explained that I wanted helpers with the trash bags (and, let’s be trustworthy, recycling all the bottles). “No hay excusas, caballero,” the officer told me. “Youngsters inside.” We were lucky; fines for violating the lockdown can go as high as 30,000 euros.
It’s day three, but looks like day 30, of a nationwide shutdown meant to curb, if not arrest, the spread of coronavirus in what has now change into one of many worst-hit international locations in the outbreak. Confirmed cases in Spain are up to 11,681, with 525 deaths—scratch that: Since I started writing, cases are as much as 13,716 and deaths to 558. The curve is steeper than Italy’s.
The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, told a near-empty parliament Wednesday morning that the “worst is but to come.” His spouse has already tested positive for the coronavirus; King Felipe, who will address the nation Wednesday night, has been tested as well, by means of his got here up negative. There’s no Liga soccer matches; the Real Madrid team is in quarantine, which, given how they’ve been enjoying, is probably for the best. There’s no Holy Week in Seville, no Fallas in Valencia.
It’s a glimpse of what’s coming for you, if it hasn’t already. Italy’s been shut down for weeks; France began Monday. Some cities in the United States are already there; the rest might be, sooner or later. Nobody is aware of for how long. Spain’s state of emergency was announced as a 15-day measure. The day it was introduced, the federal government said it could go longer. Health specialists say near-total shutdown could be needed till a vaccine for the new coronavirus is ready. That may very well be subsequent year.
Since I work from home anyway, I figured a lockdown can be no big deal. I was wrong. I’d swear the children have been underfoot all day, every single day for several years, though I’m told schools have been closed less than weeks. Cabin fever is getting so bad I’m seriously thinking of trying to dig out the stationary bike from wherever it’s buried. Now my spouse and I fight over who gets to take out the canine somewhat than who has to—canines are the passport to being able to walk outside with out getting questioned by the police, at the very least for adults. Too bad all the parks are closed.
What was once routine is now an adventure: You want gloves and a masks to go grocery shopping. (Essential providers—grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations, and, in fact, tobacco shops are nonetheless open.) I haven’t seen any panic shopping in our neighborhood; plenty of bathroom paper and pasta on the shelves. In fact, it’s hard to panic shop too hard when it’s a must to carry everything home a half mile or so on foot. Even a half-case of beer gets heavy going uphill. Pals in different parts of town say the bigger stores have a beach-town-in-August vibe of absurdly overfilled carts and soul-crushing lines.
The worst part, for a metropolis like Madrid, and a country like Spain, is that nothing else is open. The town that’s said to have probably the most bars per capita doesn’t have any now. No eating places either. All the many, many Chinese-owned bodegas that dot the middle metropolis out of the blue went on “vacation” at the start of March; now they’re shuttered.
All of these waiters and waitresses and cooks and bar owners and barbers and taxi drivers—how are they going to last two weeks, let alone two months? The federal government plans to throw plenty of money at the problem—possibly one hundred billion euros in loan guarantees, perhaps more. There are promises of more support for the unemployed. Layoffs are being undone by law. Who’s going to pay for that? Who’s going to have any money to exit to eat if and when anything does open?
The prime minister is correct: The worst is yet to come. It’s going to get brutal in the summer. Spain gets about 12 p.c of its GDP from tourism. Entire towns along the coast live off three months of insane work. This yr there won’t be any. Unemployment before the virus hit was nearly 14 percent, and more than 30 p.c among the under-25s. Spain was nonetheless, a decade after the monetary crisis, licking its wounds and deeply scarred; this is a dying blow, not a body blow.
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