Riding the Wave, 38. Approaching the Holidays.

The family news gets better, as my cousin is finally out of the ICU, though still in the hospital. The rest of the family is passing through Covid at home, and getting better, as well. 

In the parish of Taragoña, its main square with the majority of businesses, is closed, as, at one café, a few have tested positive, and people drift from one establishment to the other. In Rianxo, in total, there have been 33 positives. The number is growing day after day. The total population of the township is just a tad over 11,000 souls. I'm wondering when they will close the township.

Some European countries have cut off flights to and from the United Kingdom because of the new variant of Covid found in the area of London, which is supposedly up to 70 times more transmissable. But not Spain. Spain will rely on each passenger handing in the negative results of a PCR test. Which would be fine, except that sometimes the test is negative when the infection is recent. (And now, I see that as of tomorrow, the only ones allowed to travel to Spain from the UK are Spanish citizens and residents.)

Some Spanish regions have tightened restrictions even more over Christmas, the Comunidad Valenciana reaching the point of not letting anyone in or out of the region, not even to visit family. On the other hand, the region of Madrid allowed two concerts this weekend by Raphael, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his singing career. Only five thousand (!) were allowed at each concert, in a hall with a capacity of just over 17,000. But contagion in Madrid is going up, again, and the regional president recently announced that, instead of ten, only six people would be allowed to get together for Christmas. But two concerts with a total of ten thousand people are just fine.

This year, seafood was not as expensive as other years. But it wasn't very easy to find it fresh, either. This weekend, some supermarkets finally had a larger variety on display, with larger prices, too. The news that prices are not going up this year because of lessened demand is a myth. I suppose sellers figure that most people will still buy seafood, even if they don't buy in more quantity, so they'll just hand over whatever price is asked. Think again. What seafood I have in the freezer is what we'll eat. And we have enough for both Christmas and New Year's.  

Wednesday is the first day of Christmas vacation for kids. The regional government has said that school begins again on the 8th of January, just as it says in the school calendar. Let's see what happens. I'm not sure what other regions are doing here, but other countries are prolonging the vacation until the middle of January, such as Germany. 

In the meantime, while recommendations are made left and right not to gather together this Christmas, the possibility of doing so, even if only in small numbers, means that people are going to get together, and not necessarily in small numbers. A number of illegal parties have already been discovered throughout Spain, and I'm sure that many haven't. Come next week we'll probably see a spike in contagion everywhere, because people don't understand the concept of "let's not celebrate this year, so we can celebrate like madmen next year and for years afterward." The vaccine can't come fast enough.

Life continues.