They are nine. They are euphoric and ready for a first date. Come on, the first selfie of Phase One, one of them shouts and the rest piles up, without a mask and with sunglasses, for the photo in times of coronavirus.
They are sitting on one of the tables that the Ascuas restaurant has on the sidewalk on Calle Santa Engracia, on the corner with Bretón de los Herreros, in Madrid. The waiter is wearing gloves and a chinstrap and tells them that the menu can be chosen from the blackboard that is leaning against the door.
Madrid celebrates this Monday the return of the bustle and the meetings with family and friends after ten weeks of life withdrawn by the confinement imposed by the coronavirus epidemic that here, in Spain, caused the death of about 28,000 people.
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But the people of Madrid did not wait. Early, they ate breakfast and lunch outdoors in a city where, although it is still in spring, the thermal does not drop below 29 degrees.
They even queued to get a table on the sidewalk as they are scarce: Phase One of the gradual opening plan that 25 million Spaniards are already going through allows reunion with up to ten loved ones in bars or restaurants that have outdoor tables, but separated from each other by a distance of two meters and that not all must be occupied: only half.
The Ascuas restaurant, where the nine friends of the selfie were reunited, thus takes the opportunity to offer its menu of gazpacho, grilled cuttlefish, drink or coffee for 12.50 euros. But not all the stores that had permission to open this Monday did so.
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Some do not have spaces enabled for outdoor tables and others, which do have them, are still making numbers: returning to serve only 50 percent of the tables on sidewalks and terraces may not be profitable to reactivate the gear involved have an open bar or restaurant.
It is what was seen this Monday at noon by Cava Baja, one of the streets of Madrid with the highest density of little bowls and restaurants per square meter in the city.
Live Coronavirus cases
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With an air to our San Telmo, the three blocks of Cava Baja have almost no sidewalks. Cobblestone and narrow, that touch that makes them picturesque is also its own condemnation in this coronavirus era: Even if they had permission from the City Council, there would be no place to set outdoor tables.
According to sources in the sector, in Madrid they reopened some 500 stores. And throughout the Community, where 6.6 million people live, it did so only between 5 and 10 percent.
The City Council is studying expanding the areas enabled so that bars and restaurants can spread more tables and thus chase away the cloak of a walled city that Madrid had since mid-March, when the government decreed the state of alarm and nobody went out on the street again .
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The virus continues to circulate and the vaccine is slow to arrive but the epidemic in Spain is weakening: according to data from the Center for Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies of the Ministry of Health, in the last 24 hours there were 50 deaths from Covid-19.
In the Plaza Mayor, the icon of the Madrid of Asturias that began to become what it is today in the late fifteenth century, when King Felipe II moved his court to Madrid, this Monday, for lunch, Three of the 19 restaurants opened.
“The Plaza has risen very quiet today. Everything is going very slowly. We have been able to set up all the facilities, carry out all the initial sanitary controls, ”said José Antonio Aparicio, president of the Plaza Mayor hoteliers’ guild. The percentage that we always manage here is 70 percent foreign and 30 percent national. When there are festivities, many nationals come from other provinces but it is true that right now we are seeing the people of the neighborhood and the people of Madrid who has come wanting to enjoy the square. It’s a good chance. I have been here for many years and I am discovering a new Plaza Mayor ”.
On the other hand, in the Plaza de Olavide, in the Trafalgar neighborhood, the wide sidewalks that surround the square make it possible to space the tables of Flavia, a restaurant whose staff spent all afternoon on Sunday washing the sidewalk and the tables.
To make them open, this Monday at noon they set up three shifts of lunch -at 1:30 pm, 2:30 pm and 3:30 pm- and, per table, they receive at least four diners.
The square, which is open but has not yet enabled its two children’s play areas, burns with boys who, like a carnival, they play with water bulbs and sprinklers.
“There is nothing like getting out of a confinement, sitting on a terrace and have that feeling of freedom. It is wonderful. I want the people of Madrid to live it, but with great care, ”said the Deputy Mayor of Madrid, Begoña Villacís, this Monday. He visited the outdoor tables in the Plaza de la Independencia and even cut one of the plastic ribbons, red and white, with which so many open spaces were sealed that, as of today, they recover human warmth.
