A tale of two Covid failures — Spain and the UK
(Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)
The decision of the British government to abruptly impose a quarantine on travellers from Spain has been received with dismay by Spanish public opinion. The Spanish Prime Minister has hit back questioning its justification and saying that it is in fact “safer” to be on the Spanish islands than in the UK. The British Government’s decision crushes any hope of a much needed boost to the Spanish tourism industry, which represents 13 per cent of Spain’s GDP.
The UK is not the only country that has imposed restrictions on Spain. France and the Netherlands have advised their citizens not to travel to Barcelona and surrounding areas and Germany has advised its citizens to cancel all non-essential travel to three Spanish regions. However, Spaniards have felt particularly affronted by the British decision. This is partly because the British restriction is a blanket one, applicable to the entire Spanish territory rather than a targeted restriction focused on specific regions, as happens in other countries.
In addition, the decision humiliated the Spanish government, as it came barely 48 hours after the government made a major historical concession to the UK by (perhaps naively) letting the Spanish Foreign Minister be photographed with the chief minister of Gibraltar — as if they were equals. But above everything else, the reason Spanish people feel offended by the British quarantine decision is that it comes from the government of Boris Johnson, whose management of the Covid crisis has been considered disastrous, not just in Spain, but globally.
The handling of the crisis by the Spanish government has been poor, but one of the few consolations for most Spanish people has been the thought that other governments were actually worse than theirs. It is the politics of “at least”. The Spanish government may be incompetent, but at least they’re not as bad as the government in the UK. Spain had one of the toughest lockdowns in the whole of Europe. People were not allowed to leave the house or take out the children for a quick walk in the street — but still Spaniards felt lucky that at least their government was not pursuing blatantly nonsensical ideas such as the infamous “herd immunity” strategy.
The irresponsibility of the Spanish Prime Minister was such that just a few days before lockdown he authorised massive demonstrations, which led to his wife and various ministers becoming infected with Covid. But at least he was not as irresponsible as Boris Johnson who went with his then pregnant fiancée to a rugby game and ended up in hospital himself. The Spanish government did not gather the necessary medical material to deal with the pandemic — but at least, unlike the British Government, they managed to make the request in time to participate in the joint European procurement programme to buy the necessary supplies.
In Spain the government is held together by a coalition that includes the extreme left party, which does not augur well for the economic recovery of the country — but at least they are not inflicting a double whammy on their economy by imposing an ideological Brexit that will deprive the country of its closest trade partner just when it is needed most.
Notwithstanding the temptation to take comfort in each others’ misfortunes, the current Spanish and British governments are much closer to each other in their incompetence than they would both like to admit. Both failed woefully to prepare adequately for the pandemic. Both fiddled with the real number of coronavirus deaths. Both left their medical personnel unprotected. Both have failed at putting together an effective strategy for massive testing and tracing (including at international airports) that could allow for economic activity to resume. And both have opened up the lockdowns too fast out of sheer panic. What Spain is already facing and the UK will soon face is not the beginning of a second wave of Covid — it is still the first wave that was never properly closed down.
But there is something else that they have in common. The Prime Minister of Spain is a socialist in coalition with an extreme left party. The Prime Minister of the UK is a conservative hailed by the extreme right of his party. Though Boris Johnson and Sánchez come from such diametrically opposed political directions, they are united by the same comfort — at least they are better than Trump.
