Lockdown

Starting Saturday night, or Monday morning, depending on who you ask, Spain was put in lockdown. Pretty much everything has been closed, except for grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations and hospitals. We are confined to our house. Spaniards have taken this very seriously, almost no one leaves their homes.

There have been countless video campaigns urging people to stay home.

The government is enforcing the lockdown by policing the streets and beaches. If you are found out without an acceptable excuse and proof of your destination, you can be fined several hundred euros or even imprisoned.

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Of the few acceptable excuses for leaving the house, the only one that applies to us is grocery shopping. And then we are only allowed to go out alone. You have to carry your ID and passport. You need to have grocery bags on the way and a receipt on the return. When you do arrive at the grocery store, you must wait in line outside of the store, leaving an appropriate space between people, for someone to leave the store.

You must put on gloves before entering. All employees wear masks and gloves.

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People are encouraged to use credit cards, instead of cash. The numbers of items being stocked has been reduced. Some items are just sold out, like eggs and flour.

One of the acceptable excuses for getting out is to walk your dog. We REALLY wish we had a dog right now. One man got a hefty fine for taking a toy dog out for a walk. Some people are renting their dogs out to people desperate to get out.

All of the hotels and campgrounds in Spain have closed, not planning to reopen until June. Many hotels have made themselves available to house people who need to be quarantined.

The hospitals in Málaga have reached capacity. All nonurgent medical, dental and vision appointments have been cancelled. I had just gotten around to making a variety of appointments for the entire family to make use of the insurance that we have here. Those appointments have all been rescheduled for mid-April (we’ll see if they get rescheduled again). One of our friends is a nurse is the local hospital and says that hospitals do not have the level of protective gear that they need: specifically face masks with filters and gowns.

Spain’s borders have been closed to everyone who is not a Spanish citizen or a legal resident. Travel inside the country is prohibited. Those who must travel for work can only do so alone in their cars. Police will stop you to check why you are on the roads and to assure that there is no more than one person in the car.

The streets are nearly silent except for every evening at 8pm, when everyone in the country goes to their balconies and applauds the medical workers. Living in a townhouse at the edge of town makes it harder to participate, but we go to our balcony every night and listen for the applause in the distance and clap for our end of town (at first the kids thought we were really weird, but they are starting to come around and participate).

The medical community responded in kind:

We have somehow made life work confined to our townhouse.

The boys spend some time each day doing schoolwork sent by the schools. Before the lockdown, the boys had zero access to technology in the schools, which was shocking to us. Now they are sent all of their work digitally. Unfortunately, the teachers do not use the same kinds of technology, so we have had to figure out four different systems.

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Leo’s work is sent through a combination of WhatsApp messages and email. Oliver’s work is sent through email, Google classroom and Aula Virtual. I know that many people here do not have WiFi in their homes (many people are used to going to the libraries or hanging around businesses with WiFi) so I’m not sure how those families are accessing the work. Some of Leo’s work requires us to print out assignments (which is challenging since we, like many others, don’t have a printer). Surprisingly, copy stores are allowed to stay open so that people can make copies of urgent messages, but I don’t think the kids’ school work is that urgent (we’ll figure something out).

The boys’ music classes are done through Skype.

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We feel very fortunate to have an oven (many people do not) to be able to bake. We’ve tried to sweeten life a bit, with each kid learning to make a treat of their choosing.

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We also feel very fortunate to have so much space. Our townhouse is considered big by Spanish standards. We have multiple floors, multiple rooms, 4 patios and a teeny tiny yard. Most people live small apartments in multi-story buildings with their only access to the outside being small balconies. They are not allowed to be in the hallways or stairways of their buildings. We are making good use of everything we have.

The garage has been a great playroom.

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Our teeny tiny yard is great for exercise and access to fresh air and sunshine. I actually did a 40 min jog running from one side to another.

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And just extra living space.

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And we’ve established an hour break time when everyone goes to separate rooms to have some time apart.

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And we enjoy the views as much as possible.

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It is lonely and we are glad for our WhatsApp and FaceTime chats.

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We had a trip planned for the boys’ week off school for Semana Santa (Holy Week), which we have cancelled. Luckily we’ve gotten refunds from at least one airline, and all of our housing.

We just heard that the U.S. State department has said to come home now or shelter in place. We have decided to shelter in place. Even if we could get home (flights are few and far between), we believe that things will be far worse in the U.S. since people have barely started social distancing. Although this lockdown is not fun, Spain is taking this virus seriously and we believe, because of that, it will be a better place for us to weather this pandemic.

Most importantly, we are healthy. We are safe. We have each other.

Wishing you all good health.