Country: Spain
Continent: Europe
Governing Party:++ PSOE (Spanish Socialists’ Workers Party)
Political affiliation: Democratic/Socialist
Main crisis leaders:++ Pedro Sánchez
Status of country: Kingdom
Cases (at time of lockdown:* 5,232
Deaths (at time of lockdown) + 1,000
Cases (at time of writing):** 12,890,002
Deaths (at time of writing): 108.259
Date of first lockdown: March 15 2020
Duration: 98 days
Lockdown type: Gradual, from “state of alarm” (March 13) to full lockdown (March 15) to gradual re-opening of services through de-escalation in certain areas and for certain services.
Number of lockdowns (to date): 2
Result of lockdown(s): First one lifted too soon, as once this was done the infection rate skyrocketed, making Spain the country in Europe with the highest total of cases.
Reaction level:+++ 6
Vaccine uptake (at time of writing): 79%
Current status (at time of writing): Back to normal, as it were
Score:*** 64
Spain was another country whose name would become synonymous with Covid, and find its tourist industry decimated by the sheer volume of cases it would deal with over the next two years. Initially slow to restrict travel from China, the government believed this to be "xenophobic and reactionary", possibly in part because the measure was called for by the opposition. Unlike Italy though, Spain’s first case did not occur on the mainland but in the Canary Islands, when a German tourist was tested and came back positive for the virus on January 31. The second was also on an island, this time Palma de Mallorca, and this time a British tourist who had had contact with a French infected person. This was February 9, and three days later Barcelona cancelled its lucrative Mobile World Congress. The following day Spain recorded its first death.
The spectre of the horror unfolding to the northeast in Italy came with a vengeance to Spain on February 24, when a doctor from Lombardy who had been on holiday in Tenerife tested positive. The hotel he had been staying at was placed under lockdown. This was the first real action Spain took in relation to lockdowns, although it was very local and specific. Over the next week, Italians in Spain began testing positive and the caseload went up. By the end of the month there were 58 cases in Spain, one of which was responsible for the first case in Ecuador, a woman returning from holiday in Spain bringing the virus to the South American country. On March 8, as the government dithered and the opposition fumed, a planned march for International Women’s Day went ahead and a big football game was not called off. After this, Spain’s figures doubled, with 1,231 cases and 32 deaths the very next day (not that much in one day I mean, just that the previous day cases had stood at 616 and deaths at 17, so basically, whether it was to do with the two events - which surely it must have been - there were another 615 cases and another 15 deaths announced).
Regional governors such as the Catalan began suspending events, but still there was no lockdown nor any travel restrictions. Schools shut down from March 12, but again this seems to have been an independent decision by the establishments, not an order received from the government. This came, more or less, the next day in the announcement of a “state of alarm” (basically a watered-down version of a state of emergency; I suppose to some extent you could call it a state of mild worry?) and then at last a national lockdown from March 15 was imposed. By now Spain was heading for the 10,000 mark in cases and had recorded over 300 deaths. Like Italy before it, Spain announced a support package for those who would be out of work due to the lockdown, theirs comprising 200 billion Euro. A moratorium was put on mortgage payments, signed into law by the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, and efforts begun to research to find a vaccine.
On March 22 the lockdown was extended into April, and, a grim reminder of how many deaths there were - over 1,000 now - one of the ice rinks in Madrid was converted into a temporary morgue. This was a sight we would see in other countries too, a harrowing visual representation of the threat the virus posed, and a reminder to those who dismissed Covid as “a small flu.” As more and more medical staff were found to be positive and unable to work, and the hospitals and care homes began to creak at the seams, a horrible discovery was made. Old people left abandoned in retirement homes, left, presumably, to die while their so-called carers saved their own skins. Like I said, the pandemic showed us the best and the worst of humanity, and this was certainly a bitter example of the latter.
Spain’s head of the Centre for Health Emergencies, Fernando Simon, tested positive on March 30. Simon was the face of the daily coronavirus briefings, so I imagine it would be as if Dr. Faucci had caught the virus. At this point there were over 64,000 cases in Spain, and over 4,000 deaths. The lockdown was again extended, this time to the end of April. Finally, from the beginning of April cases began to slow down, and the peak of the first wave seemed to have been reached. As case numbers dropped, Spain began partially re-opening, from April 13, with a phased de-escalation in four sections resulting in the country coming fully out of lockdown on midsummer’s day, June 21. Case numbers had risen to over 220,000 and deaths to over 25,000. For a country whose government confidently predicted that there would only be a “handful” of cases - not deaths now, cases - this was a stunning shock and probably seen as hubris by the Spanish government. Mind you, as we’ll see, and as we know, very few countries took this pandemic as seriously as they should, so we can’t be too hard on Spain. They were only saying what every other government was saying.
As would be the case almost always after lockdown was eased, people went mad with their freedoms restored, and inevitably the case numbers, and deaths, began to climb again, leading in Spain’s case to a reinstitution of lockdown from October.