Today, Spain went into lockdown. Sort of.
We woke up to a gorgeous blue sky, rare around these parts–San Sebastian is in the humid north where it rains a lot, and I mean A LOT. In a state of disbelief, because truly, no one around us looked sick, my friends and I all thought, well, surely I can go for a walk, no? As long as I don’t get too close to anyone then I’m social distancing, right?
The problem with that is that once everyone thinks that way, then tons of people are out on the street and no one is any distance from anyone else at all!.
For example, the authorities in Spain have been pleading with people to “Social Distance” since last week. When I went for a walk on Friday, what I figured might be my last free walk for a while here, this is how Spanish teenagers were practicing social distancing.
So you can see why the authorities wanted to hurry things up.
Apparently the whole city had the same thought on Sunday and hundreds of people were out strolling along the promenade while others went surfing. Surely you can social distance in the ocean, right?
Apparently not.
Eventually the police started getting people off the street, and by mid-day, they were patrolling the streets, calling from their megaphones, todos a casa, i.e everyone go home.
Part of the confusion might have stemmed from the complicated and delicate relationship between Spain’s autonomous regions, such as the Basque Country, aka Euskadi, where I am, and the national government. With hundreds of cases of Covid-19 late last week, the Basque Government had already announced a massive shutdown. On my walk on Friday night, this was the scene in the old part of San Sebastian, which on a Friday night, is usually packed head to shoulder to toe. So the grown-ups were getting it a little bit more than the teens, sort of.
In any event, the Spanish decree did not go into effect until Monday, the 16th, while the Basque decree went into effect over the weekend. Hence, the confusion. Already, the Basque Government was a little bit prickly that the National Government had superseded their decrees. As you might know, the Basques and the Catalans do not like to be told by Madrid what to do.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, my friends and I were also confused about what exactly we could do. Could we go to the store for bread, for milk? Were we in reduced movement or confined to our houses? One of us ventured out, instructing the rest of us via whatsapp group to look for her in jail if she didn’t return home in an hour.
Joking aside, joking seemed to be how most people survived Day One. My phone was blowing up with memes: Kermit dancing drunk, having finished eight bottles of wine on day two; hairdressers doing clients’ hair with fake hands attached to the end of brooms; exhausted dogs draped over the sofa, with captions reading but they’ve already taken me out 38 times today!
Meanwhile, Spain had already followed Italy’s collective balcony singing. Since Saturday, everyone has been throwing their windows open at eight pm in neighborhoods across the city and clapping for the health care workers. My mother-in-law, who is 82 and truly not planning to leave her apartment for many, many days, was buoyed by all the lights that were on in her neighborhood. “I’ve never seen it so bright,” she crowed on the phone to me.
And so there we were, on Day One of Confinement/Quarantine-whatever we’re going call it. The times feel dark, but so many people around me were working to brighten the first day-and what’s coming: opening the windows and saying hello at 8 pm; massive sharing of humor and suggestions for reading; organizing on-line group yoga classes; institutions taking down paywalls and making everything available on line to read and watch; keeping in constant contact via social media and whatsapp.
Many people have commented that the virus is a message to humans that we have not properly stewarded the earth and ourselves. If so, let’s hope that out of this darkness and death and what portends to be some very hard times ahead, that we all come out a little stronger, more thoughtful, more connected, more generous and more hopeful, as people around me here in Euskadi and Spain have already demonstrated themselves to be.
