Melgaço village spent Easter ″ stop ″ waiting to leave the sanitary fence on Tuesday

The sanitary fence imposed on the village of Parada do Monte in Melgaço, since March 25, should be erected next Tuesday.

Five of the seven infected with Covid-19 in the parish were hospitalized, but four have already spent Easter at home and the rest are recovering. The presidents of the Board, Ricardo Alves and the Melgaço Chamber, Manoel Batista, agree that “if no more cases appear by Tuesday, there are conditions to raise the sanitary fence“.

The decision will be made on that day at a meeting scheduled for that purpose with the health authority. “At the start, we will survey the fence. People are calm and there were no more cases “, said Manoel Batista.

Until then, that village of Melgaço, closed for 20 days, will continue to live up to its own name: parade.

“People have obeyed. Everything is at home, even if it is Easter Sunday. In fact, here now every day seems like Sunday. You only see one person or another on the paths and fields“, said the mayor Ricardo Alves, lamenting the absence of the Compass that, by tradition, walks the streets followed by the people of the land. And fills the heart of the village with a festive atmosphere.

“Instead of the bells and the noise of the people gathered, the birds are heard “, he lamented, commenting: “If it weren’t for this virus, today we would all walk behind the cross, so the cross walks behind us”. And he added that “fear” took over the aging population. Of the seven infected, only one is less than 80 years old.

Jornal de Notícias visited Parada do Monte this Easter Sunday morning, and found empty roads and streets. And some inhabitants looming at the door or the window, listening to the mass that was being broadcast from the parish church to the entire village.

“We prepared this celebration with a restricted group of people (five) and we lived Easter this way: through the Internet, in this case from Youtube, and through our loudspeaker. People follow us, even abroad“, said Father Raul Fernandes, referring that in the Sunday Eucharist he included” the litany of the procession of collecting the Cross at the end of the Easter Compass so that people could feel that moment “.

That parish, located at more than 700 meters of altitude, has about 350 inhabitants and everyone felt the absence of Easter, except for two.