I’d taken the dog down, too, and the kids, since they hadn’t been outside in days. It was midnight—right after we finished dinner—and I figured they may carry a trash bag and get a breath of air. The dog had barely peed when the patrol automobile did a U-turn, blue lights flashing. I defined that I wanted helpers with the trash bags (and, let’s be honest, recycling all of the bottles). "No hay excusas, caballero," the officer told me. "Children inside." We have been fortunate; fines for violating the lockdown can go as high as 30,000 euros.

It’s day three, but looks like day 30, of a nationwide shutdown meant to curb, if not arrest, the spread of coronavirus in what has now become one of the worst-hit international locations in the outbreak. Confirmed cases in Spain are up to 11,681, with 525 deaths—scratch that: Since I began writing, cases are up to 13,716 and deaths to 558. The curve is steeper than Italy’s.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, told a near-empty parliament Wednesday morning that the "worst is but to come." His wife has already tested constructive for the coronavirus; King Felipe, who will address the nation Wednesday night, has been tested as well, by way of his came up negative. There’s no Liga soccer matches; the Real Madrid workforce is in quarantine, which, given how they’ve been taking part in, is probably for the best. There’s no Holy Week in Seville, no Fallas in Valencia.

It’s a glimpse of what’s coming for you, if it hasn’t already. Italy’s been shut down for weeks; France started Monday. Some cities within the United States are already there; the remaining shall be, sooner or later. Nobody knows for a way long. Spain’s state of emergency was announced as a 15-day measure. The day it was introduced, the federal government said it will go longer. Health specialists say close to-total shutdown may be needed until a vaccine for the new coronavirus is ready. That might be subsequent year.

Since I work from residence anyway, I figured a lockdown could be no big deal. I was wrong. I’d swear the kids have been underfoot all day, day-after-day for several years, though I am told schools have been closed less than weeks. Cabin fever is getting so bad I am seriously thinking of attempting to dig out the stationary bike from wherever it’s buried. Now my spouse and I struggle over who gets to take out the dog moderately than who has to—canines are the passport to being able to stroll outside with out getting questioned by the police, at the least for adults. Too bad all of the parks are closed.

What used to be routine is now an adventure: You want gloves and a masks to go grocery shopping. (Essential services—grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations, and, of course, tobacco shops are still open.) I haven’t seen any panic shopping in our neighborhood; plenty of toilet paper and pasta on the shelves. In fact, it’s hard to panic shop too hard when it's important to carry everything home a half mile or so on foot. Even a half-case of beer gets heavy going uphill. Buddies in different components of town say the bigger stores have a beach-town-in-August vibe of absurdly overfilled carts and soul-crushing lines.

The worst half, for a city like Madrid, and a country like Spain, is that nothing else is open. The town that's said to have the most bars per capita doesn’t have any now. No restaurants either. All of the many, many Chinese-owned bodegas that dot the center city immediately went on "vacation" at the start of March; now they're shuttered.

All of these waiters and waitresses and cooks and bar owners and barbers and taxi drivers—how are they going to last weeks, not to mention months? The federal government plans to throw loads of money on the problem—perhaps one hundred billion euros in loan guarantees, perhaps more. There are promises of more help for the unemployed. Layoffs are being undone by law. Who’s going to pay for that? Who’s going to have any money to exit to eat if and when anything does open?

The prime minister is correct: The worst is yet to come. It’s going to get brutal within the summer. Spain gets about 12 p.c of its GDP from tourism. Whole towns alongside the coast live off three months of insane work. This yr there won’t be any. Unemployment before the virus hit was nearly 14 percent, and more than 30 p.c among the many under-25s. Spain was still, a decade after the monetary crisis, licking its wounds and deeply scarred; this is a dying blow, not a body blow.

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