The dead go by hundreds in Spain. The registered infections by thousands. The numbers were so horrifying last week that you can no longer comprehend them. Spain has 838 deaths today, 832 on Saturday, 769 Friday. It stabilizes, it sounds hopeful.
But on Monday, the Spaniards start the third week of their incarceration. The rules are tightened: anyone who is a “non-essential” job now is also at home. The government is also going to massively check the phones of Spaniards to get an idea of their movements during the lockdown. The data is demanded from the telephone companies.
Without too much grumbling, the gruff country takes the new measures.
Kill
Last week, something happened to me that I had never experienced as a reporter. Tears suddenly rolled down my cheeks. It happened after a radio call in Speech makers on NPO Radio 1, which concerned the nursing homes. After dozens of deaths were reported in those centers for the elderly, the army intervened. Soldiers were deployed in the disinfection.
But they also found some residents dead in their beds. Their family members received a phone call requesting to collect the body. The drama did not stop there, the influx to the Madrid cemetery is so great that it is closed. Also at the mourning centers there is no longer a chest. As an emergency solution, the Palacio de Hielo – a skating rink – has been opened as a mortuary for the coffins. That too is now full.
I guess no listener heard it, but when I told it, something snapped. I was not a speech maker for a while. This was too surreal. Dead old people in their beds. No more room for the boxes. An ice rink opened as a morgue. If anyone submitted this as a movie script, it would be rejected.
What did Spain know?
I browse photos on my phone and come to the days before the lockdown. March 8 was International Women’s Day. The local authorities did not hesitate for a second with their permission for the demonstration. It was a great party, hundreds of thousands walked through the center of Madrid. Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo was there, alongside Begoña Gomez, the wife of Prime Minister Sánchez.
We now know that both were infected with the coronavirus. What did the Spanish government really know on March 8? You constantly heard that it was not that bad, that it would not go that fast. But the words of Fernando Simón, the head of the crisis center, had not yet been said whether the Spaniards were in their confinamiento. The state of emergency, the lock.
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