Obviously, after more than a month without word from me, there is a lot to write about. Sadly, most of that will remain unwritten. The days since COVID arrived have sped by...I don't know where the year has gone, honestly. My last post was acutally just three days after the one year anniversary of the Corona virus lock-down here in Spain and the beginning of the "state of alarm". This estado de alarma has been extended continually to date and only will end (we hope for good!) this Sunday, May 9th--mark your calendars.
Under the state of alarm the federal government can implement things like curfew, close city/province/state boarders and limit the number of people allowed to get together in public or private spaces. We are coming out of a fourth wave of the virus here and I must say that if COVID doesn't get you, "pandemic fatigue" most certainly will. We are sick of this (I think that goes for most everyone reading, as well).
Vaccinations are slowly on the rise here; but our statistics pale to those in the U.S. The E.U. was sold short on several vaccines, and then ran into some nasty side-effects from the AstraZeneca vaccine. Of course all of this is bound up tightly in red tape. I think we're somewhere around 10% of the population fully vaccinated at this point... Obviously things could be worse, but hearing from so many fully vaccinated friends and family I am feeling sorry for us Spaniards.
You may be wondering what will happen when the state of alarm expires on Sunday. All of us are! Many individual states are appealing to the Supreme Court to pass laws quickly that would allow for state governments to implement restrictions on mobility and number of people allowed to gather. This has apparently been approved in the Balear Islands. As far as I know, Andalusia hasn't asked for this extention of state power (and I sincerely hope they do not).
At some point, I do believe that people need to take this as a matter of personal responsibility...of course, a public health worker may think otherwise. To my mind this is a situation that can be likened to that of an overbearing parent. If a parent constantly and consistantly makes a child's decisions for her, she doesn't learn self-control or how to recognize the limits of what is acceptable and what isn't. Without mom or dad to tell her what to do, she runs wild...this is exactly what has been happening here with every attempt at loosening restrictions. People go crazy.
Speaking from first-hand experience helping Angelines and cleaning the bar on weekends, I can tell you that the way people are going out, and drinking is frightening. They all act like college freshmen at a frat party! Curfew is currently 11pm (it has been earlier) and now bars are allowed to close at 11; however up until just a week ago, the bar had to close at 8pm. People were going out with the apparent objective of drinking as much as posible before closing!
I won't argue that aglomerations of maskless people are a danger nowadays. But the frenetic way in which people are getting together in recent months is in large part due to the restrictions imposed to "keep us safe". People are repressed and feeling more than ever like they need to let off steam. When they aren't allowed to that pent up anxiety (or whatever you want to call it) builds and the minute there's a little extra leeway in the law, they throw caution to the wind and go all out. One cannot help but wonder how all of this will permanently change habbits, and customs.
But as it turns out, every storm cloud does in fact have a silver lining: alcoholic Spaniards deprived of socialization who aren't allowed to leave the province, means great business! Obviously the bars and restaurants in big cities and tourist destinations have been really hard hit with the pandemic. Thankfully in our case, even with the very limited hours they allow us to open, we're bursting at the seams! People in La Roda have always tended to go elsewhere to go out--Málaga mostly. Our town is right on the border, but we belong to Seville province and from Christmas until last week the provinces have been closed. In our case that means no one from here can go anywhere outside land-locked Seville province. We are an hour and a half from the capital city, and the draw of Málaga is the beach anyway; so more than 100% of our usual clientel have been "stuck" here for the past few months and it shows in the way sales have skyrocketed. Angelines was joking the other night that we should set up a clandestine laboratory to create another pandemic virus just to keep business going!
Anyway, I know you're all as sick of the pandemic and COVID news as I am, but as May 9th draws near, there really isn't a whole lot more on my mind. I promise a more newsy post soon.
