This blog is usually about music, but I’ve been living in Madrid for the past eight months, and daily life has markedly changed in recent weeks. Here’s one piece of it.
The second weekend on coronavirus lockdown in Madrid was the grimmest. People were at their most fearful, and it felt suffocating.
When the Spanish government announced a state of alarm earlier in the month, on March 13, there were 5,232 confirmed coronavirus cases in in the country — a 66 percent jump from the day before. When the 15-day lockdown took effect two days later, on Sunday, there were 7,988 cases. All non-essential public-facing businesses, restaurants and bars were required to close, and residents were restricted to their homes except to buy food or medicine, or to go to work. That left Saturday for food shopping, a previously routine activity that suddenly became freighted with subtext, including the mix of risk and respite inherent in leaving the house, the privilege of being able to afford food as the economy craters, and the responsibility not to hoard.
Grocery shopping in Madrid, and Spain in general, is usually entertaining, at least outside the supermarkets. It’s a nation with a passion for food, and there are innumerable bakeries, fruit and vegetable stores, butcher shops, and places that sell cheese, olives, cured meats and other gourmet goods that are more like household staples here. Sometimes they’re all grouped together in one building, a galería de alimentación, or food mall, like a year-round farmers’ market that’s open every day. Once you find your favorite spots, it doesn’t take long to become a regular, and the people who run the stores or kiosks are happy to offer suggestions, share preparation tips or, when you return, to ask how something turned out.
That Saturday in the Mercado de Chamberí, my neighborhood galería, the sentiment among vendors and customers felt like a combination between the last day of school and impending apocalypse. There was a current of jittery energy paired with amiable resignation, and standard small-talk — “qué tal?” or “how are you?” — was met with a weary smile, as if to say, You know. Here we are.
That feeling of cautious equanimity deteriorated quickly over the following week, and anxiety took hold as the number of coronavirus cases bloomed and the death toll began to climb. During that stretch, my wife or I would make short daily trips to the bakery up the street for bread, or the fruit store, usually with one of the kids, just to get out of the house for 15 minutes. The streets were mostly empty, and more and more, the few people we’d encounter were wearing masks. The mood outside was increasingly tense.
By Thursday, March 19, there were 18,077 cases. That day, the “express” grocery store nearby was reluctant to let my wife in with our son. Shopping there now began with an employee in a mask administering a squirt of hand sanitizer at the door, before pointing customers to a box full of the flimsy plastic gloves formerly used for pawing through produce. It probably should have been obvious before, but it was suddenly very clear that the children should stay at home, and we tried to limit ourselves to two grocery outings a week. (With a small apartment kitchen, limited storage space, express grocery stores that were haphazardly stocked even before the lockdown, and two hungry little boys, two trips a week is our best-case scenario.)
Back at the Mercado de Chamberí, there was no small talk that Saturday, March 21. There had been 25,496 confirmed cases by then, with 1,381 deaths. Many of the vendors were skittish, and most of them were now wearing masks (often incorrectly) as they conducted business in a brusque, hurried and very un-Spanish way. The market is in a large, high-ceilinged space with concrete-tiled floors in the middle of a city block. Four aisles run the length of the building, with stalls lining both sides of each aisle. Our usual produce stand, which had been fine with accepting cash, was now only taking credit cards to minimize person-to-person contact. The woman behind the counter that day, unfailingly pleasant in the past, barely made eye contact. The fishmonger in the back corner, who always offered a hearty greeting, was reserved, almost dour as he maneuvered a gigantic knife around cuts of tuna, hake and cod. The man selling olives, nuts and other assorted items from his stall in the middle of the market was very polite when I had to do a second transaction to buy something I’d forgotten the first time, but I felt bad about it and he seemed relieved when it was finished. The whole place was hushed, almost furtive, and shoppers gave each other a wide berth as they hurried through their errands, desperate to collect what they came for and rush back to safety.
Going out to buy food had become less of a furlough from confinement than a disquieting trip into the unknown. The government on Sunday, March 22, had announced plans to extend the lockdown to April 11. Smaller shops posted signs limiting the number of customers permitted inside at one time, and even going to the grocery store often involved a wait on the sidewalk as part of a one-out, one-in policy. There were other frustrations: Marcos, the charcuterie guy at the produce store up the street, told me he’d been wearing the same mask for three days, with a paper napkin folded up and jammed inside, because his boss simply couldn’t find more protective gear.
The weather was uncharacteristically gray and cool, which contributed to an oppressive atmosphere on the street. It was hard to breathe. The more I focused on not coughing, or touching my face, the stronger I felt the impulse to clear my throat, scratch my nose or adjust my glasses. Leaving the house was like sliding up a fader on my heart rate from steady and controlled to fast and pounding, and each return home came with tight, bunched shoulders and a tension headache.
The number of cases had risen past 57,000 by Thursday, March 26, yet the mood had started to lighten as anxiety blended into the background noise of daily life — it’s still there, but you don’t notice it as often. There were flashes of humor: an endcap at the express supermarket featured a beer-of-the-month special: Corona. Chit-chat returned. At the bakery, the boss, Alicia, likened the olive-green mask that matched her apron to camouflage, and joked that wearing it all day at work meant she didn’t have to put on makeup. Shop clerks began ending transactions by saying, “Be careful!” At the mercado that Saturday, March 28, with 73,235 confirmed cases and just shy of 6,000 deaths, the “credit cards only” sign at the produce stand had disappeared, and when I asked for col (cabbage), another woman behind the counter gave me good-natured guidance in being more specific: repollo for green, or lombarda for red.
By now, mid-April, Spain has around 175,000 cases — second to the United States — and more than 18,000 people have died. But the rate of new infections continues to fall, and the number of daily deaths seems to have peaked at the beginning of the month. The government has extended the lockdown again, to April 26, and is expected to tack on at least two more weeks after that. Nothing is exactly normal — walking outside still feels illicit, and there remains an air of apprehension in the grocery store, where lines taped on the floor separate customers waiting to check out — but a new routine is taking hold, and people are adjusting.
At the supermarket the other day, I had a choice between gloves or hand sanitizer, instead of having to use both. Later, chatting with Marcos at the produce store while he sliced cheese, I asked how he was doing. He shrugged. “Aquí, resistiendo,” he said: Here, resisting.