Settle Down, Friends, or This Ain't Ever Over.

The day Prohibition was ended

This past Monday, 51% of Spain came out of strict lockdown for a slightly easier model, which, among other permissions, allowed us to congregate in small groups of under ten, socially distanced, around the doors of those bars which had opened for the occasion. The idea that tables would be two metres distant and potential customers wouldn’t pass within the exclusion zone on the way to their own modest bacchanalia was as absurd as were the crowds of people that engulfed certain terraces and kiosks.

Now, it’s been hard for those living in the city, or in small and crowded apartments, and the opportunity for a beer, a tapa and a chinwag with friends proved hard to resist. By Tuesday, the news was full of joints that had been closed down by the police and the customers sent ignominiously home (Bilbao, Santander, Almería and so on).

Then there was the overflowing Murcia bus and the crammed flight to Palma de Mallorca.

Not all of Spain ascended to Phase One, and there was plenty of criticism from the regions that didn’t. In Andalucía, most of us made the grade, but the two provinces of Granada and Málaga (yes, and the Costa del Sol) remained for at least two more weeks in the lower division, and the president of the Junta de Andalucía was suitably scathing on his regional TV about the irrational discrimination from Madrid.

In Madrid, another Zone Zero region, they celebrated their relegation over the weekend with a reported 400 illegal home-fiestas and 97 botellones (wiki).

Finally, we learned that the Vox supporters are asked to drive around in their cars (with, one can only hope, their windows up) on Saturday May 23rd waving their suitably gloved-fists against the ‘social-communist government’ for its hopeless handling of the whole shebang.

All in all, the serious message about taking care neither to spread nor to catch the virus appears to be falling partly on deaf ears.