Lockdown, day 47.
From my home in Tiana, Spain.
Big news! The lockdown in Spain is slowly getting lifted, step by step. Baby steps even. Compared to the Netherlands, still very little is allowed. But if you have been indoors for almost fifty days, every change is a good one. I look foward to the fourth of May, when we can go out on the streets again withou a grocery bag, child or dog. But it's not just getting lifted like that. For seniors and children there will be different rules. They are only allowed to go outside at certain hours. Children in the morning and seniors - us - in the afternoon. I get it. Seniors are particularly at risk and children are difficult to keep at distance.
Small business are opening their doors again. But everything happens on appointment. Take away meals have to be orderen in advance and if you need tools for instance, you have to call the hardware store to ask when you can come. Yes, even hair dressers are getting back to work. They were offcourse always working on appointment, but now, just like at other companies, just one person at the time is allowed inside. Family and friends are still not allowed to visit each other. This will be possible after 11 May at the earliest, and only if they live in the same province. Schools stay closed until September.
It's a good thing there is a phased plan now, in which the how and what for the coming months is indicated point by point, complete with target data. This 'calendar' will of course be used flexibly because the virus lurks. Nevertheless, such an overview provides something to work with for the near future. We know roughly where we stand. Unfortunately, in the Netherlands many things are still in the unknown.
We can forget going on holiday to Spain this summer. I even heard that Spain aims to keep its doors closed to tourism for the entire year. We specifically wonder when we will be able to go back to the Netherlands again. We have tickets for a flight on May 4th. It was the first possibility. But we're not going. We're postponing the return journey till the end of May. We will wait to see what happens in the Netherlands. Judging by the images from the news, we think there are too many people outside in the Netherlands. And for now, we're fine here.