Confinement - stop freedom - Girona 2020

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We thought we lived in a more or less predictable world, free from threats that could radically change our lives. We had read Camus’ The Plague, and we could not imagine such a thing happening. It seemed far away from us. In a world without hygiene, technology, healthcare…

The day before we went under home arrest, we already knew that something serious was going to happen. The first fifteen days, I felt a terrible rage against the world’s powers and the global economy: to me, they were guilty of what was happening. I kept wondering why China was not isolated, as the world powers helped solve the pandemic. I think this would have been the solution.

Still we carry our suppressed rage and our fear, which we pass on to one another.

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I detest: the tireless and repetitive stay at home, home, home, home, home, home, home

Together we will win, wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnn

We will get through this. Get distracted. Get video involved. Take care of yourself.

Put on a mask. Now, don’t wear a mask.

Wear gloves. Now, don’t wear gloves.

Wash your hands, 40 sec., 1 m. Wash your haaaandsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

That incriminating neighbour shouting “cover you idiot, or we will all die!”. Living in a selfish, sad, and immature country, surrounded by Covid-19 sufferers, does not help. I must say that I spent my incarceration alone in a small city in Catalonia, where nobody came out of their balcony, where people did not even say hello to each other. They only went out to their windows at 8 o’clock to clap for the NHS, and from time to time we heard a sad sardana.

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These are some of the most anxious times of my life, together with the enforcement of article 155 on the people of Catalonia, which lasted over seven months. This has all happened in a short time and will surely stay in our minds forever. I laugh now, think about the yellow virus (as some call Covid-19, because it originated in China) and it reminds me of a previous project on the “virus GROC” [yellow in Catalonian], which is how we called the pro-independence virus. According to this project, pro-independence people had caught this virus. That project, was it premonitory?

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A horrible, thick, and oppressive silence scattered throughout the city. You could only hear coughing and the chirping of some crazy birds which believed the city would always be theirs. What could we fear most, staying at home and facing ourselves and our demons, or going outside, where the virus awaits us? Where is the enemy? Probably, in both places.