A Time to Live, a Time to Die

"When a society regrets the economic loss more than the loss of life, it doesn't need a virus, it is already sick." Mohamad Safa

We’ve seen clips of American freedom-fans (with their submachine guns) gathering in packs outside City Hall and calling for the right to ignore quarantine rules (or guidelines, depending on where they are). ‘These are great people’, says Trump here. They will vote for him in November, they say, those who manage to stay alive until then.

We’ve seen Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro smother a cough as he tells his fans not to fear crowds.

We see our boy Santiago Abascal call for all quarantine to be lifted in Spain forthwith.

Who do these leaders speak for – the ordinary people or the captains of industry?

Certainly we are heading for the Mother of all Recessions. Worse, no doubt, the longer we stay inside; yet, worse too, if we come out too early.

Politics is more or less following the same division. The left seeks to save lives (they’ve not done a particularly good job of this in Spain), the right seeks to save jobs, the economy and, in short, capital. If you can’t eat, they say, you’ll die anyway.

But, answers the left, the simple choices are poor and alive, or rich and dead. Politics. This division is creating huge tensions, which spills out into a non-collaboration policy from the opposition. A policy which not only weakens the country, it also weakens its response to the coronavirus.

There will be some gentle loosening of restrictions in the coming weeks. Children up to the age of 14 will be allowed out (briefly, with face-masks, and under parental supervision) from April 27th (El País in English here) and, further ‘…there will be a “cautious and progressive” de-escalation of confinement measures from May 11th’. But, does letting us out earlier carry the risk that we are going to end up being in quarantine for longer (HBO’s John Oliver here)? It’s a bit like the storyline for Jaws – the resort needs to open again…

Of course, no one knows. There’s no vaccine. There’s only hope against the worst. Perhaps the plague will return after the summer, or we shall slowly build up a resistance, or maybe it will mutate into something worse

The far-right (and pro-business) Zero Hedge asks here ‘What will you do if they try to extend Covid-19 lockdowns into next year?’ Jeez, that’s a hard one. It notes ‘…These lockdowns may be slowing down the spread of the virus to a certain extent, but they are also absolutely crushing economic activity…’.

The maverick American politician Ron Paul pens a piece called ‘what if the lockdown was all a big mistake?’ here.

A regular presence on BoT is Marc Stücklin who has just recovered from a three-week bout with Covid-19. He says ‘…Although I understand the need for an initial lockdown to give the health system a chance to prepare, not least to give medical staff a chance to catch and recover from the virus before they are overwhelmed with sick people coughing all over them, I fear the cure will end up worse than the disease. An economic depression will come at a high price in terms of human health and happiness…’.

On the other hand, the left-leaning Common Dreams says ‘…We must protect ourselves and others, especially the most vulnerable. Solidarity and common sense dictate that we change what up until now has been considered “normal” behaviour…’.

Some regions in Spain have had fewer cases of coronavirus, and they lean towards easing up on their restrictions. Andalucía is one such and the president Juanma Moreno says that the hospitals are now coping but businesses are not.

A map of the incidences by regions is here…

 

Cuts in Tourism

Tourism seems to be one of the largest losers for this year. In short, there won’t be hardly anyone travelling by air (or sea) in the remains of 2020, thanks to the coronavirus. It’s not just the consideration that no one wants to be cooped up in a metal coffin (coughing) flying through the skies from one airport to another, followed by a bus ride and two weeks sharing the same hotel restaurant and swimming pool with strangers, or of course to be trapped in a cruise-liner with two thousand others and the people in the next cabin with runny noses.

Oh, the local businesses will be more anxious than ever to welcome what trade they can find, but they will be forced to adopt government restrictions which will put a large dent in their takings. Just for an example – the distance between tables.

Many businesses in the service sector will go bust, including many/most of those foreign-owned bars and restaurants, which may be paying over-the-top rents to inflexible local landlords, and who rely primarily on tourism.

From La Ser comes:  ‘The European Union advises against "booking" and the summer holidays for "July and August"’ . It also notes that ‘According to Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, the isolation of the elderly could be extended "until the end of the year"’.

While some Spanish voices turn hopefully towards an increase in domestic tourism in 2020, again, the prospect won't offer much encouragement to the foreign-owned bars and restaurants on the costas.

Certainly, Easter was a bust, with the industry losing 18,000 million euros over the Semana Santa.  

The Canaries, a traditional tourist destination, where 87% of visitors are foreigners, expects to lose around 80% of its usual visitor numbers in 2020, says the regional government, which means a forecasted loss of 30% of the islands’ GDP. A similar situation awaits Mallorca.

Tourism, says El Confidencial gloomily, will return to the España of the fifties.

Briefly, a New Beginning

It's kind of interesting what's happening now. We've been in lockdown for a month so far and we have just been told to expect another month of the same ('at least'). The meaning of 'lockdown' seems to be changing as this crisis extends itself: the police are out there because there is almost no excuse left to take to the street (I saw a cop car fining some poor idiot last night at 2.00am from my window - all he wanted was a chocolate bar).
I live on a horse-farm, with stables and a couple of paddocks. There are over thirty horses and no one to ride them. At least I am out every day working on the scut jobs - watering, feeding and moving one from here to there, and another from hither to yon. Bits of horse kit (all with new names en castellano as I learn stuff with my sieve-like brain) and where we left them bent over a fence or on a wall somewhere. Fixing a fence, shouting at the water-heater. Collecting a massive number of eggs each day from the poultry; uprooting taters from the lower forty.
No one to help, because, you know, lockdown.
I had to go to the medical centre because my wife Alicia is still in a wheelchair after an accident in December and we needed a prescription. I'm talking to a nurse through the window of the car and we both have masks on, and rubber gloves and goggles. A fellow is energetically squirting the car with some killer mixture. I get the prescription and drive round the corner to the farmacia, whooping through my lowered mask to get my breath back.
The chemist from behind his sheet of virus-proof glass sells me a potion to wash my hands every time I leave the property.
So, we are kitted up, in case of doubt.
The IMF says to expect a recession as important as the Great Depression of 1929. Who the fuck is going to want to pay for riding lessons in a time like that, or for livery service (we currently have ten horses that are 'paying guests'). I'd jump out of the window, only we live on the ground floor.
So, the next month - at least - will be driving down to the supermarket every once in a while and buying whatever goes well with eggs, or over to the feed store for another truck-load of straw.
We never thought it would come to this, although we knew something was coming (my friend Jesse, an American gun-nut, was hoping for zombies). But, when it's all over, or - to be more precise - when it's as over as it's going to get, we won't be going back to the good old days. They've gone.
Expect more government control, a minimum guaranteed income, no foreign holidays, a highly cautious society (wary of football matches, cinemas, restaurants, bars and shopping malls) and a large number of places, currently closed, that won't be opening again.
Just try and explain all this to the horses.

The Plague Dogs

It seems there can never be a single view on anything in this life – and even the coronavirus has its two sides. There are those who support the government’s handling and those who criticise it (that’s to say, almost anyone from the opposition). All good fun, but do we really need a fifth column at this moment to weaken our democracy? There’ll be time enough, once this is over, to hold the government to account. Remember, too, that no one has ever faced this kind of emergency in living memory and we must learn as we go. Would the opposition do a better job? Maybe, maybe not. Let us hope that we never need to find the answer to that particular question.

Juan Carlos in Deep Water

                     

King Juan Carlos had a pretty good rep until the elephant-shooting debacle in Botswana a few years ago (here). In his hay-day, he was popularly known as something of a roué and stories of late-night trips away from the Palace on his powerful motorcycle and, more sedately, holidays on his yacht or, ‘with a companion’, in a large estate in Mallorca were common knowledge. He had, after all, supported the introduction (or ‘return’ if you prefer) of democracy in Spain and he scotched the horrific attempted coup d’état in 1981 while, beyond that invaluable moment, he generally kept above politics during his reign (wiki).

Then, in 2014, he abruptly resigned as Regent, passing the crown to his third child and only son, the immensely tall and rather distant Felipe (wiki).

Known today as ‘El Rey Emérito’, Juan Carlos has become a liability. While his apparent philandering has been more or less ignored (outside feminist circles), his remarkable cupidity is now very much in the news.

Or, at least – and perhaps understandably – in some of the news.

Público led on Thursday last week with ‘No trace on the front pages of “the Serious Press” regarding Juan Carlos I’s activities in Switzerland’. The news-group obliges its readers with a link to La Tribune de Genève which breaks the story saying ‘Juan Carlos hid 100 million in Geneva’ (paywall). We must move to Le Soir (Belgium) which says:  ‘the Spanish monarchy trembles: former king Juan Carlos accused of hiding €100 million in Switzerland (elsewhere reported as $100 million). The monarch received the money from Saudi Arabia according to revelations from La Tribune de Genève. The affair is beginning to have political fallout on the Iberian Peninsula’.

The first mention in El País (in English) here that all was not well opens up a second front: Corinna Larsen, the notorious companion of the ex-king. ‘A High Court judge in Spain has requested new information from a public prosecutor in Switzerland over an investigation the latter is carrying out into a donation received by Corinna Larsen, a friend of Spain’s former king, Juan Carlos I. Swiss state attorney Yves Bertossa is probing an alleged money-laundering offense involving Larsen, in relation to the possible payment of illegal commissions connected to a Spanish project to build a high-speed AVE train link in Saudi Arabia...’. Corinna was formerly known in happier times as Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says Wiki, and the reference site adds ‘...She is a friend of King Juan Carlos I of Spain and was allegedly his mistress. In 2012, she accompanied him on an elephant-hunting safari to Botswana...’. Vanity Fair looked at the other problems of Juan Carlos in an article from 2013 here. ‘...his younger daughter and her husband enmeshed in a corruption scandal; his marriage to Queen Sofía on rocky terrain; his relationship with a glamorous German businesswoman under scrutiny...’.

Now, the stories of corruption, bribes and wrong-doing are arriving thick and fast. In brief: VozPópuli here: ‘The foundation created from the alleged Saudi "gift" to Juan Carlos I was dissolved after transferring the money to Corinna’. The foundation in question was based in Panama (more here).

From El Confidencial here ‘Juan Carlos I now faces inquiries in three countries –Spain, Switzerland and the UK – that threaten his fortune and his legacy’.

ElDiario.es says ‘Corinna Larsen to denounce Juan Carlos de Borbón in the United Kingdom after receiving threats not to reveal "state secrets"’.

From The Telegraph (covered by Diario 16 here): ‘Former King of Spain Juan Carlos funded private jets from foundation linked to Swiss investigation’. El Español talks of five million euros spent in private flights.  The money allegedly came from a commission, held in a trust in Lichtenstein by a cousin of the king, which was paid through the sale of the Banco Zaragozano to Barclays in 2003.

Worse still, an editorial from El Confidencial here: ‘The Corinna file: how love (for money) devoured King Juan Carlos’.

The Government was highly worried about this situation back in 2014 and no doubt insisted on the abdication; however nobody politically and publicly wishes to tackle this issue, beyond Unidas Podemos which has been calling for a full investigation (ElDiario.es here and Le Monde here) which is going nowhere after a majority cabinet refusal to open this particular can of worms on Tuesday (here).  

Those Bourbons, hey? A critical look at the dynasty here.