Day 42 – Sunday 26th April
An exciting weekend. Yesterday the Spanish government finally announced the rules for children being allowed out for exercise. From today up to three children under 14 can go out with one responsible adult for one hour of exercise up to 1km from their home. They must observe social distancing from others and use of playground and sports facilities is not allowed.
The government also announced that they may allow the rest of us out for an hour’s exercise a day from next Saturday, May 2nd. This is contingent on the continuing decline of new cases and deaths, and provided families this week respect the rules for children going out.
So this morning I was at my window watching hawk eyed to see how the families were behaving. There are a lot of families in this urbanisation and if they all went out at the same time it would be chaos. I know this because when the government closed the schools the Wednesday prior to the lockdown, it was madness in our plaza. Hoards of kids running around and screaming at the top of their voices, obviously ecstatic to be off school. I did think at the time that I was far more likely to catch the virus now than when they were in school.
However today it was all very organised. They mainly started to appear from midday through to 2.30pm and then again from 5pm to 8pm. It was all nicely staggered and no more than two to three families out in the plaza at one time. It’s a big plaza so this works fine. I don’t know what it was like on the streets, as I obviously haven’t been out today, but I’m hopeful if the view from my window is anything to go by.
I did wonder whether I would resent the fact that children are allowed out when I’m not, but in fact it was quite the opposite. Turns out I have missed the noise they make. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the constant chatter of children in my apartment, but the sound of happy playing from a distance is nice. I like to see life going on around me and for the past 6 weeks it’s been deathly quiet out there. That is not normal for Spain where the noise volume on the street is normally set to maximum. Today some of that normalcy returned and next weekend hopefully even more.
The government also announced that it will be discussing the quarantine deescalation plan with the regions this week and hopes to publish their intentions next weekend. Again this is dependent on no increase in cases. Fingers crossed folks.