Standing on a lamppost, he watched the panorama with a resigned face. The party is over, friend: no more murders of pigeons without witnesses, no more lonely walks in front of the sea or breaks taking the sun on a bench. The humans returned, dear seagull.
At seven in the morning there were already hundreds of people on the Barceloneta promenade, who multiplied with the passage of minutes. How I wanted to get out of the house, to see the sea, to get the air.
Some were recognized as long-time sports lovers, eager to wear sports shoes and wear the “I love running” style shirt, while others, who did not pretend to deceive anyone, admitted with their eyes that the art of running They only practice it when the bus runs away.
Many people from Barcelona have had this morning, from six to ten, their first opportunity in a month and a half to leave the house to play sports or walk, and they have not missed it.
Four comments hunted on the fly summarize the bustle of lived people. “Això sembla la Rambla, tu”, one hallucinated. “There is one of peñaaa,” explained a woman on a mobile phone. “Aunt, people do not stop touching me. Fucking disgust,” another lamented.
“But what is the protocol?” One boy with an unmistakable Basque accent asked another. Friend’s response: “The protocol is: you go out, and if they catch you, they’ve caught you.”
Of course, it is impossible to keep a safe distance from so many people. And doing sports with a mask seems complicated, so those who wore it were a clear minority. It only remains to hope that the virus has been knocked out by the heat and has not had a feast this morning.
Dodging the avalanche of athletes, up and down, there were cars and vans of the Urban Guard or the Mossos d’Esquadra, as well as agents on foot who had little choice but to observe the scene.
Who cared the most about the panorama was a nurse from the Hospital del Mar, located on the promenade, who took a break with a frown, arms akimbo and a cigarette in her mouth.
Sala Ismaili also smoked – in this case a laughing cigarette – accompanied by his dog Patxi Mediterráneo: he is a homeless artist who dedicates himself to building castles in the sand for the enjoyment of tourists.
You can still see, with the Hotel Vela in the background, its last construction two months ago, inexplicably still standing. Ismaili says that he is having a hard time because during this state of alarm he has not won a single euro.
It is already ten o’clock and law enforcement officers remember it: the sport is over, go home, please. In ten minutes the walk has been practically emptied, with the exception of some clueless.
One backs down, warned by the police, and raises his eyebrows when crossing his gaze with this journalist, as if saying that by the hair. The other, Italian, reproaches his rigidity to the agents and takes the opportunity to discharge the accumulated frustration: “Does it seem normal to you that I have to wake up on a Saturday at six in the morning to run?”
A few minutes later, people with white hair and a cane begin to appear: they are over the age of seventy, who can walk until twelve.
Carme Fernández is 88 years old, lives alone in an apartment of about 30 square meters and until 65 she owned a chicken shop in the Barceloneta market. She has been confined since March 1, because a doctor who treated her on February 25 turned out to be infected by the happy virus.
She has barely gone out once a week to throw out the garbage or to approach the market, given that the purchase is taken home on Fridays by a social worker from the City Council.
Carme crosses her gaze with a seagull, we will say that from the beginning of the chronicle to square the story. He has a face of not understanding what is happening, he feels the ground with his legs before taking off into the sky. You may be wondering why humans have hidden again.
‘RUNNERS’ IN MADRID The streets of Madrid have been filled this morning with ‘runners’ and people walking in the first hour to do sports freely from 6 to 10 hours.
Thus, in the early hours, the area of Puente de Toledo / Carabanchel, Bernabéu, Paseo del Prado or Calle Ibiza have been crowded with people on bicycles, on skates, running or simply taking a walk.
From this Saturday you can do individual sports and walk once a day in any of the two time zones proposed: from 6 to 10 in the morning and from 20 to 23 hours.
Outdoor sports must be carried out in the same municipality of residence –without an hour limit beyond that allowed by the strips–, while in the case of walks, one cannot go more than a kilometer away from their home. .
At the same time, and to prevent people from concentrating at the same times, the hours of the rides already allowed for children under 14 between 12 noon and 19 hours are restricted.
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