Lockdown in Spain:
How They Handle It

Today, I’m going to take you all to the eastern part of Spain, after the Dutch coverage last week. Yes, we’re going to Barcelona, which has never been this quiet before Covid-19 strikes.

For your information, Spain is currently one of the most affected countries by COVID-19. Spain joined Italy and the US for the most cases outside China, with 85,000 infections at the time of this writing. As a result, Spain imposed tighter lockdown, and even extended it to the next two weeks (April 25, 2020).

For further insight regarding the situation in Spain, last Monday, Elisa invited Ariston, her friend who currently lives in Barcelona, Ariston. Ariston is a master-degree student who currently studies in Polytechnic University of Catalunya, who takes Big Data Management and Analytics program (not far from the IT world).

That Escalated Quickly

Spain is currently the second in the world for the highest confirmed COVID-19 cases with 4,000 confirmed cases per day. The confirmed cases slowed down in the past two days at the time of this writing due to the (extended) lockdown.

In response to the high number of cases, the Spanish government has imposed a total lockdown for the past month, which means people can only go out for important stuff (such as but not limited to doing groceries, going to the pharmacy, or walking their pets). Everyone should carry a document saying where he’s from, where he’s going to, and if he’s caught by the police not going to the place filed in the form, he’ll be fined EUR 6,000 (around Rp 1 million).

But, why things went extremely fast in Spain? Look: from just physical distancing, to a total lockdown in just two or three days? Let’s watch this video for the three reasons Ariston explained to us.

As you’ve heard in the video, the Spanish government measures escalated quickly from only physical distancing, then to closures of public non-essential places, and after that to the total lockdown, which replicates the Italian situation. The reasons are similar:

• Because people are reckless. This is particularly hard for Europeans who are used to making physical contacts with one another (e.g. hugging, shaking their hands).
• It’s plausible that the aging population contributes to the dramatically increasing death toll in Spain–just like in Italy.
• Both the Spanish and Italian governments responded slowly to the virus, resulting to the total lockdown in just a few days.

On Online Learning

On his quarantine days, Ariston has been undertaking online courses, which takes place on various internet platforms (e.g. Google Meet), depending on the professor. He has to attend between one of these types of online classes:

1. Pre-recorded classes (the students watch a video before the class hence the live session will be dominated by question & answer sessions), and;
2. Live-video classes, in which he has to attend 2-hour video call sessions with the professor. But, it’s impossible to be active in the class without good speaking, isn’t it? We encourage you to improve your English speaking skills with us so that you’ll be confident when communicating both online and offline 🙂

Other than the lecture, he has to turn in assignments on a given date as most courses there used project-based learning. Comparatively, in Indonesia, we admit that some schools in Indonesia don’t even have the proper online sessions, which is different from the universities (especially in developed countries like Spain), explaining why students are complaining about the assigned workloads to them with very few good lectures or explanations in the pre-recorded videos. Let’s hope the schools can learn from them soon.

Have You Done Your Part?

At the time of this writing, Indonesia has yet to reach the point Spain has. Similar to the tips coming from the previous interview, here are the things Indonesia has to learn from Spain:

1. Just practice physical distancing, stay at home. It feels hard if we can’t contribute to anything, but it works. This looks annoying, to stay at home and still see other people going out. But, everyone has to do their part, and let’s hope we all can get through this together.
2. Physical distancing/lockdown will be cyclical. For example, when the situation is better, the lockdown regulations will be relaxed. Otherwise, when the situation worsened, the regulations will be tightened. He also gave us a link to the article here.

Quarantine Tips

Here are the quarantine tips Ariston shared with us during the live. This is similar to the previous interview, but trust us, it’ll work.

1. Try to make a routine. For example, doing your workouts or doing some hobbies, like catching up on your favourite series, reading a book, and learning languages by podcasts–like Coffee Break Languages.
2. It’s okay for us to laze around once a week while reading useful articles, which is my type of spending time in quarantine. This enables us to gain more information, as well as increase our knowledge while lying down!
3. Call your friends. One positive thing from the lockdown is you can catch up with your old friends because listening to somebody is different from texting only. For example, Ariston called his friends in Brussels to play online games together.
4. Learn cooking. Healthy-cooking, experimental-cooking, you name it.

Stay tuned for more quarantine tips in the next blog article!

VOCABULARY TO LEARN

• ESCALATED QUICKLY: Describes things that change dramatically, in Indonesian also pertains to “perubahan yang cepat/mendadak.”
  
• RECKLESS: Also known as ngeyel in Indonesian, reckless describes someone who does something dangerous but not worrying about the risks and possible results.
  
• PLAUSIBLE: Can mean “dapat dipercaya” in Indonesian, plausible describes something that seems true or believable.
  
• PROPER: Pertains to “baku” in Indonesian for this context, proper describes something real, satisfactory, suitable, or correct; or something that shows standards of behaviour that are socially or morally acceptable.
  
• DO THEIR PART: Pertains to “berperan masing-masing” in Indonesian, this means to do what one is responsible for doing or is able to do.
  
• WORKOUT: Can pertain to “olahraga ringan” in Indonesian, a workout is a period of physical exercise. It doesn’t have to be “heavy sports” like football, basketball; but it can be a simple push-up or sit-up.

How to pronounce plausible

For more basic vocabularies related to COVID-19, aside from the Dutch interview, you can go to this post.

Quick Quiz!

1. In the video above, he mentioned “efek samping” and “apotek” in English. Can you spot the English words?
2. Translate this sentence into English: Kita semua harus berperan dalam melambatkan kurva penularan Covid-19 ini.