World Through COVID-19, Spain
One of my favorite things about traveling is meeting new people and luckily, I’ve met so many remarkable people through my travels. Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll be talking to friends across the globe to see how this pandemic has affected their country and community.
For this week’s livestream, I talked to an old college friend, Guillermo Nicolás García, who lives in Asturias, Spain. I did my study abroad only 15 minutes away from Guillermo’s hometown so Spain has a special place in my heart. As the country with the second highest cases in the world, it’s really affecting the community and economy in unimaginable ways.
Spain as it stands today:
226,629 cases, 23,190 deaths.
Spain has really been affected by this virus. As the second country with the highest cases.
Madrid has the highest ration of people affected. They think the virus entered the country in the Canary Islands, but really spread uncontrollably in Madrid.
Next week, Spanish employees will start going back to work, even though cases haven't dropped.
It's been over 40 days in quarantine and a lot of Spaniards live in small apartments with large families.
You're only allowed outside with a dog. So the dog shelters are all empty now.
Starting next week, kids will be allowed to go outside. People may abuse this rule by borrowing friends' children to go outside.
Police and military are patrolling the streets to ensure no one goes out.
Medical Status:
Spain received virus tests from China that didn't work. That was a very controversial moment within the country. They return the tests to China and to their knowledge they have functioning tests now.
There aren't enough tests for everyone.
Not enough PPE's for everyone, especially when citizens are still using packed metros.
The community applauds healthcare workers every night at 8 yet, when healthcare workers come home, they get greeted with notes and letters saying not to come back to their apartments since they're contagious
Government and Economy:
There is a lot of opposition within the government and the community.
When COVID-19 outbreaks started happening, the government didn't shut down. They allowed public gatherings up until things got really bad in their country.
Every time the government does something the right party opposes it and tries to sabotage it.
The country needs to keep generating money as unemployment rose to 3.5 million, the highest level since 2017.
The government is providing some stimulus packages to corporations and freelancers.
There is universal rent to everyone, which is 500 Euros, not enough to fully cover rent.
There are a lot of unknowns with how this will affect the Spanish economy in the long run and it's causing a lot of anxiety and depression amongst the country.
As we're looking at similarities and differences between each country, I hope we can learn and implement those learnings into our own daily lives. Hoping the cases don't spike in Spain, but by everyone choosing the economy over their own health, it's very likely cases will spike and it will get a lot worse before it gets better.
Huge thanks to Guillermo for sharing his insight!