MADRID. COVID MAIN SCENARIO
Spain is its bars. The sun, the beach, the tapas and the people. This is true, you just have to walk around Madrid, my city, at any time of the day to realize it. Now let’s remove the bars and the beaches, only the people remain. Well, and the sun. Only people remain, only we remain. And what do we do now? Without physical contact, without going out for a drink with our friends on a Tuesday as if it were a Friday. With no places to consume. We are going to look more European than ever, although we will always belong to the Med club, to the group of the poor of this Union that every day gives more to think about.
I live in Madrid, where on March 11 universities, institutes and schools were closed. Although it was not until the 14th that the state of alarm was decreed. It was serious. It was no longer a flu in an Asian country far from home, it was here, where nothing ever happens, where public health is decent, where despite the difficulties the system works. Within an order. Since then, my field of action is limited to these views and occasional trips to the supermarket. But I am lucky.
Although for a few days, we can go outside, by time bands according to age or personal circumstances.
The first thing that amazed me when I went out into the street, always within a radius of 1 km from my home, was seeing this urban micro ecosystem formed by “weeds” in the tree pits and interstitial spaces where the cement has not yet been strained. That made me happy. See that there are no bottles of Cabify and Uber on the street, but that the mosquitoes are still waiting for fresh blood (I got a few bites). Also see that the “pollution beret” that decorates the city sky is not, not a trace of that dirty air.
Those were crazy days, with lines to buy at the supermarket, with empty shelves of non-perishable products and the famous toilet paper. The popularity of these products has been relegated by flour and yeast, now we only eat banana bread and homemade bread.
Also of madness in the networks, concerts, workshops and a host of audiovisual material were organized so that no one felt alone, so that we all had a digital link. But these cartridges were used up too fast, nothing happens for not having anything to do for a while. We cannot transfer our pathological stress and fear of the unproductiveness of our analog pre-covid scenario to this new, more digital scenario. Make bread, buy shoes, sew your own mask, customize a cushion, volunteer for the Red Cross, give pilates another chance, cut your hair, pick up Infinite Jest, learn Python, oh, and clap at 8pm. This applause ritual, apart from structuring our daily schedule, has been exported as the 15M gatherings (Occupy Wall Street or Occupy London) or paella.
From an urban planning point of view, this is an opportunity, as all epidemics or pandemics have been. So it was with cholera or plague. Or in the south of Spain, where many of the facades of traditional houses have always been painted white (calcium oxide) in order to disinfect. Another element more evidenced, the marginalization of local knowledge, that sick and exhausting spirit of urbanites feeling superior to ruralites.
The opportunity to model and reinvent yourself. It will not always be for the better, not all governments seek what is known as the common good. In the case of Madrid, the conservative municipal government has chosen to work together with the opposition, a fact that seemed never to happen, and to reverse some of its worst decisions. I explain this point better, during the previous legislature, the more social government started real measures to make Madrid a city that takes the health of its citizens seriously, reinforcing mobility by bicycle and public transport, and encouraging participation citizen. Things were not always done well, the north-south inequalities were still there, but the social and environmental issues were on the table. Pedestrian-izations and coexistence spaces were carried out, which with the arrival of the new executive put themselves in danger and sometimes backed down.
And part of the initiatives that are activated from today, include pedestrian-izing some sections of busy streets (some of them only during the weekends), historical habitats much to our regret the private car.
Madrid, with its parks, its squares, its green areas and its social life has several problems highlighted these weeks. There is not enough public space, there is no cohesive and coherent and fair network of public micro-spaces in the neighborhoods. What collides frontally with our outdoors lifestyle. This, together with the narrow sidewalks of some areas, makes it totally impossible to maintain the social safety distance. And resolve again, in favor of wealthy neighborhoods. This time, a new element of vulnerability is added to neighborhoods that are not so lucky. Along this line, very interesting projects have emerged, such as the app launched in Madrid a week ago (Distanciamiento) where you can see the width of the sidewalks and whether or not they would allow you to comply with the distance. It is of great interest in order to really get to know the city we have, with its shortcomings and opportunities, and to direct efforts to design and implement measures to reverse the situation.
We will touch each other again, greet each other with hugs and invade personal space, stay in a bar and sit on a bench while the heat island does not embrace us, but we will all be marked and Spain will not be just its bars. But the conclusions that can be drawn from this situation are like the Roschard test, and everyone will see what they want to see.
Note: currently we are in Phase I which means we can go around almost without restrictions, but no hugs, no kisses, no more than 10 friends together…and face masks mandatory!
