Light at the End of the Tunnel

What would another president have done? '...But Sánchez is stubborn and wants sole command. He demonstrated this in his fight against his own party and now, in addition, he governs in coalition with those who will not put ahead of the scientists the pressures of Big Business and those of the conservative media....'

The de-escalation of the Stay at Home rules is coming along slowly and cautiously. Children under 14 were allowed out as from last Sunday (with a responsible adult and for a short period, observing safety rules) and now it appears that from this weekend the rest of us can also enjoy a walk. But if those infection numbers start to rise, we’ll be back behind the front door soon enough and getting ready for a fresh marathon of watching TV serials.

We read with cautious hope that ‘Sánchez will maintain the state of alarm until the end of May as he takes steps towards the de-escalation’.

The fear is, of course, that it could all come crashing back, like the Spanish flu which began in January 1918, becoming far more virulent as time went on and only receding in December 1920 (wiki).

The message from Fernando Simón, the scratchy-voiced Government expert, is to be careful and not flout the safety rules as ‘a step backwards will be a terrible thing to undergo’ (video). Antena3 says that German virologists claim that we are at the beginning, not the end, of the coronavirus pandemic.

So far, says El País, the experiment seems to be working, with ‘no generalised or serious cases of non-compliance of the rules’.

But, the warm weather… the beaches… the thirst for company and a beer…

One of the apologists for a speedy return to normal is the regional leader Juanma Moreno, the President of Andalucía. The region has seen relatively fewer infections than other areas (34 per 100,000 as against national average of 138), and understandably worries about its tourism. ‘Andalucía should be the first region to return to normality’, he says.

Nationally (and more responsibly), Pedro Sánchez ‘will avoid setting dates for de-escalation measures’ (here) but in a televised speech on Tuesday, he explained the new plans to gradually open up Spain once again. The Olive Press explains here the process, with the caveat that ‘the de-escalation will be ‘gradual and asymmetrical’, done so on a provincial or island basis, depending on the curve of the coronavirus’.  

However, with luck, we should be back to normal (más o menos) by the beginning of July.

For small business, a gradual opening, with (for example) ‘the inside of restaurants to open for table service with capacity limit reduced to a third’ (Phase Two) is not going to inspire confidence since "The whole business model, the whole point of a restaurant, is to get as many people as possible into the space on a given night," Edouardo Jordan, owner of JuneBaby and other restaurants in Seattle, tells the NYTimes.

Frustration but caution. Let us not be revisited with a second and more dangerous return of the Coronavirus.