The Year We Stopped Touching

There was a moment when we stopped touching one another. We stopped shaking a stranger’s hand, kissing our parents, embracing our friends. We stopped getting close. For weeks, and then for months, protecting the people we loved meant staying away from them. Distance, until then a form of separation, suddenly became a form of care. Spain had close to 47 million inhabitants when a threat that for weeks had seemed remote entered people’s homes, emptied the streets, closed schools, shops and businesses, overwhelmed hospitals and forced an entire society to confront something for which it was unprepared. On March 14, 2020, the Spanish government declared a state of alarm and severely restricted freedom of movement. From that moment on, people could leave their homes only for certain activities considered essential: buying food and medicine, attending a medical centre, working in authorised sectors or caring for dependent people. Within hours, a way of life that had seemed unalterable disappeared. Roads emptied. Airports fell silent. Railway stations stopped receiving travellers. Shutters came down. Parks closed. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao and cities across Spain began to present an image that was difficult to recognise: streets built for millions of people with almost no one in them.

But the story of COVID-19 in Spain had begun long before the country locked itself indoors. On January 31, the first coronavirus case detected on Spanish territory was confirmed on the island of La Gomera. The patient was a German tourist. At the time, the virus was still perceived primarily as a problem from elsewhere, associated first with Wuhan and then with certain regions of Asia. Europe continued to function almost normally. The next major outbreak emerged in Italy and, when images of overwhelmed hospitals and locked-down cities began arriving from Lombardy, the threat was no longer thousands of kilometres away. On February 25, new cases were detected on the Spanish mainland, and a day later an infection with no known connection to the areas previously considered at risk was confirmed in Seville. The virus was already circulating inside the country without having been detected. From then on, events accelerated. Cases increased, clusters of community transmission appeared and Madrid began to account for a significant proportion of infections. What was still being presented as a manageable crisis was beginning to escape the mechanisms designed to contain it.

The days preceding the lockdown in Spain would become one of the great areas of controversy surrounding the management of the pandemic. During the weekend of March 7 and 8, the country continued to hold numerous mass gatherings. There were football matches, cultural events, political rallies and demonstrations. Tens of thousands of people took part in International Women’s Day marches, while around 9,000 attended a Vox rally at Vistalegre in Madrid. Government representatives attended the March 8 demonstrations; politicians from other parties also participated in different events, while Vox held its own gathering. Shortly afterwards, infections were reported among politicians from different parties, and Vox apologised for having gone ahead with its rally. Political debate would later focus particularly on the March 8 demonstrations, but reducing the spread of the virus during those days to a single event oversimplifies what happened. Community transmission had already been taking place, and during that weekend Spain maintained a degree of normality that no longer corresponded to the epidemiological reality. The relevant question was not only which event should have been cancelled, but why a country in which the virus was spreading increasingly rapidly continued to bring thousands of people together in stadiums, demonstrations, political rallies and other public spaces.

On March 9, the Madrid regional government announced the closure of schools and universities. Measures began to follow one another at a speed few had experienced before. Companies sent employees home, events were cancelled, conferences and competitions disappeared, supermarkets filled with people buying food and basic supplies, and face masks began to become an everyday object that was still difficult to find. On March 11, the World Health Organization characterised the global outbreak as a pandemic. Three days later came the state of alarm. The transition from normal life to confinement had taken barely a week.

Inside hospitals, time moved differently. Patients arrived in ever greater numbers, many suffering from severe respiratory illness. Emergency departments had to be reorganised, intensive care capacity was expanded, non-urgent operations were suspended and spaces designed for other purposes were transformed to care for COVID-19 patients. Clinical knowledge of the disease was still limited. There was no vaccine. There was no specific treatment capable of stopping the virus. Healthcare professionals were learning while trying to save lives. And they were doing so, particularly during the first weeks, amid a shortage of protective equipment that would become one of the starkest images of the initial improvisation. Masks were worn for longer than intended, gowns were improvised, goggles reused and even rubbish bags employed as makeshift protection in some healthcare settings. Spain would record one of the highest numbers of infected healthcare workers during the first phase of the pandemic. The same society that applauded doctors and nurses from its balconies every evening discovered that those on the front line did not always have the equipment they needed to protect themselves.

At eight o’clock every evening, for weeks, windows opened. Across entire neighbourhoods, people who did not know one another began to recognise each other from facing balconies. They applauded healthcare workers, but those few minutes also allowed people to acknowledge one another, to realise that beyond the walls there were others living through the same uncertainty. There was music, birthdays celebrated from windows, conversations between neighbours who had never spoken before, police officers wishing children happy birthday from the street and small rituals designed to impose some kind of order on days that had lost their familiar references. The lockdown also had this communal dimension. But it would be a mistake to turn those months into a romantic story of solidarity. The experience depended enormously on where and with whom a person was confined. Lockdown in a house with a garden was not the same as lockdown in a forty-square-metre interior flat. Keeping a salary through remote work was not the same as suddenly losing every source of income. Being confined with others was not the same as being alone. And being twenty years old was not the same as being eighty.

Nowhere was that difference more brutal than in nursing homes. The virus found almost every condition it needed to cause a tragedy: elderly people, many with underlying medical conditions, living together; carers in constant contact with numerous residents; initial difficulties obtaining diagnostic tests; and shortages of protective equipment. When the coronavirus entered some facilities, it spread with extraordinary speed. Entire families were prevented from visiting their elderly relatives precisely when they needed them most. Staff had to care for, isolate and accompany residents under extraordinary conditions. Some homes experienced extreme situations, and hospital capacity, referral protocols and the criteria used at the point of greatest saturation would generate a controversy that became part of the most painful memory of the first wave.

For months, it was not even possible to establish precisely how many people had died in Spanish nursing homes. Regional governments used different information systems, many of those who died had never been tested, and the figures distinguished between confirmed deaths and deaths involving symptoms compatible with COVID-19. The numbers had to be reconstructed. Aggregated data for 2020 eventually recorded more than 16,000 nursing-home residents who died with confirmed COVID-19 and close to another 10,000 who died with compatible symptoms: more than 26,000 people in total. The scale of COVID in Spanish nursing homes cannot be separated from the statistical problem itself. During the first wave, thousands died without a confirmed diagnosis, and subsequent statistics had to reconstruct what the system had been unable to count while it was happening.

Here lies one of the great contradictions of the pandemic in Spain: for months, there were different ways of counting the dead. Every day, official figures offered an apparently precise picture of the epidemic: cases, hospital admissions, intensive care admissions and deaths. The numbers provided a sense that what was happening could be measured. But that precision was, in part, deceptive. During the first weeks, diagnostic capacity was severely limited. Many people died at home or in nursing facilities without ever being tested. Regional governments reported figures using different procedures. The Ministry of Health changed criteria and made retrospective corrections. A death could appear on a death certificate yet remain absent from the daily COVID statistics because the infection had never been confirmed by a test.

The result was a significant gap between different ways of measuring mortality. While the official count was built primarily around diagnosed deaths, mortality-monitoring systems were measuring something else: how many people were dying compared with the number statistically expected to die. Excess mortality during the first wave was substantially higher than the number initially appearing in the daily official reports. Spain’s National Statistics Institute would later incorporate both deaths from COVID with the virus identified and those in which the disease appeared as suspected on the medical death certificate. The mortality-monitoring system, MoMo, meanwhile recorded an extraordinary excess of deaths during the worst weeks. These figures are not directly interchangeable: one measures certified causes of death, another deviations from expected mortality, while health authorities used their own epidemiological surveillance criteria. But that difference is itself part of the story. There was no single number capable of explaining, in real time, how many lives the pandemic was taking.

Acknowledging that contradiction does not automatically mean that every discrepancy was the result of deliberate manipulation. An overwhelmed epidemic response, shortages of testing and different regional reporting systems inevitably produce incomplete data. But neither can the official figures released during those months be treated as a complete representation of mortality. The issue also became political because each number quickly acquired a meaning extending far beyond epidemiology. Counting the dead meant measuring the scale of the tragedy and, by extension, assessing the management of those responsible for confronting it. Government and opposition argued over figures, responsibility and jurisdiction while administrative records slowly reconstructed a reality that had been impossible to know precisely during the worst weeks.

For families, however, that statistical argument had little to do with the experience of losing someone. One of the cruellest characteristics of COVID-19 was the way it altered death itself. For centuries, an essential part of mourning had consisted of being present: sitting beside a bed, holding a hand, gathering the family, keeping vigil over the body, attending a funeral. The virus turned all those gestures into a risk. Thousands of people entered hospitals and their families were unable to see them again. Telephone calls replaced visits. Doctors and nurses held phones so isolated patients could hear one final familiar voice. Funerals were restricted. Embraces disappeared precisely when they were most needed. Dying alone ceased to be an exception and, during those days, became an all too common possibility.

Morgues also became overwhelmed. In Madrid, the Palacio de Hielo ice rink was transformed into a temporary facility for the dead. Images of coffins and funeral vehicles made visible what statistics could not convey. The Armed Forces took part in disinfection and support operations through Operation Balmis. The Military Emergency Unit entered nursing homes and other facilities. Field hospitals appeared in exhibition halls and public venues. IFEMA, built for conferences and major trade fairs, was transformed within days into a hospital intended to relieve some of the pressure on Madrid’s healthcare system. The architecture of ordinary life began to be used to survive an entirely different reality.

Outside the hospitals, Spain remained still. Police and the Civil Guard controlled movement. Beaches were empty. Churches closed. Holy Week processions disappeared from the streets. Children spent weeks unable to leave their homes. Classrooms were hurriedly transferred to screens, and the pandemic exposed another inequality that had until then remained partly hidden: not every student had a computer, a reliable internet connection or a quiet place to study. Parents tried to work while caring for their children. Teachers learned how to teach remotely. Grandparents, who for years had supported a significant part of family life and childcare in Spain, became precisely the people from whom families had to stay away.

A huge part of the economy stopped as well. Bars, restaurants, hotels, shops and businesses closed. Tourism, one of the pillars of the Spanish economy, virtually disappeared for months. Temporary employment adjustment schemes, known in Spain as ERTEs, became one of the principal mechanisms intended to prevent a temporary suspension of activity from immediately turning into millions of job losses. By the end of April 2020, more than 3.3 million workers were covered by an ERTE. Behind that figure were millions of lives placed in economic suspension, people who did not know when they would return to work and small businesses that did not know whether they would ever open again.

The pandemic did not affect everyone equally. Those who could work from a computer discovered remote working. Those who cleaned hospitals, drove buses, staffed supermarkets, transported goods, collected rubbish or cared for dependent people had to continue going outside. Many of the jobs suddenly defined as essential were precisely those that had previously received little public attention and were not always well paid. A confined society suddenly understood the extent to which it depended on people it rarely noticed.

The first weeks also exposed the fragility of international supply chains. Countries around the world competed to buy masks, ventilators, gloves, gowns and diagnostic tests. Spain entered a chaotic international market in which prices were rising, intermediaries were appearing and some of the products purchased failed to meet the required specifications. Batches of diagnostic tests had to be withdrawn because of inadequate sensitivity, and some purchases would later become the subject of investigations and controversy. The emergency required exceptional procurement procedures, and that exceptional environment also created opportunities that would ultimately lead to judicial investigations into certain operations. The pandemic was a public-health emergency, but it also moved billions of euros in a very short period of time.

By the end of April, the country slowly began to emerge. Children were allowed outside again under specific conditions. Adults were then permitted to walk and exercise outdoors. Spain began a phased reopening in which every step seemed to restore a small piece of the life that had disappeared. An open café terrace became a symbol. Walking beside another person felt extraordinary. Provinces progressed at different speeds according to their epidemiological situation, and politics returned with full force to the question of who could move forward and who had to wait. After weeks in which the country had accepted restrictions that would previously have seemed unimaginable, exhaustion was also beginning to set in.

The first wave had left another uncomfortable certainty. Spain was nowhere close to achieving collective immunity. The national ENE-COVID seroprevalence study estimated that around 5 percent of the population had antibodies, with enormous geographical differences. Despite the devastation of the spring, the vast majority of the population remained susceptible to infection.

Summer restored an appearance of normality. Hotels and restaurants reopened, tourists returned, families met again and face masks became an established part of everyday life. But the virus had not disappeared. New outbreaks emerged, followed by a second wave. Restrictions returned, although they did not take exactly the same form as the nationwide stay-at-home order imposed in March. Gatherings were limited, businesses were required to close at certain times, regional and municipal borders were sealed and curfews became part of daily life. Spain declared another state of alarm in October. Much of the management was decentralised to the autonomous communities, and the country became a mosaic of different restrictions.

The legal architecture used to confront the pandemic would itself eventually be challenged. Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled that certain provisions of the first state of alarm were unconstitutional, finding that some of the restrictions imposed amounted to a suspension of fundamental rights that could not be implemented through that constitutional mechanism. It later also declared aspects of the second state of alarm unconstitutional, including questions relating to the duration of its extension and the delegation of powers. The rulings did not deny the seriousness of the health emergency or the need to adopt measures, but they added another dimension to the record of those months: even in an extraordinary crisis, the legal mechanism used to restrict fundamental rights mattered.

While courts, governments and parliaments argued over powers and restrictions, society had learned a new vocabulary. PCR. Cumulative incidence. Contact tracing. Close contact. Quarantine. Asymptomatic. Aerosols. Words rarely used before became part of family conversations. Every figure acquired extraordinary importance. People watched curves as they had once watched the weather forecast. They argued about masks, ventilation, schools, restaurant terraces and family gatherings. Science was advancing at the same time as the public debate, and that speed inevitably produced corrections. Some recommendations changed because the evidence changed. Others changed because decisions had been made with incomplete information. For a society searching for certainty, accepting that scientific knowledge is also built through correction proved difficult.

Christmas 2020 arrived with a mixture of exhaustion and hope. Entire families debated whether they should gather. Travel and the number of people permitted at celebrations were restricted. And then something appeared that during the darkest months had seemed distant: a vaccine. On December 27, Spain began its COVID-19 vaccination campaign. The first priority groups included residents and workers in nursing homes and healthcare staff. Those first injections carried a symbolic weight that was difficult to separate from their medical significance. After months of trying to keep the virus away through distance, masks and isolation, there was finally a tool specifically designed to prepare the human body to confront it.

Vaccination did not immediately end the pandemic. New waves, new variants and new hospital admissions followed. There were debates over priorities, vaccination rates and certificates. But the relationship between the virus and society began to change. Protection against severe disease increased, particularly among vulnerable groups, and hospitals gradually ceased to face the same level of defencelessness seen in March 2020. Nursing homes, the places most devastated during the first wave, provided an especially clear demonstration of the effect of vaccination as severe cases and deaths among residents fell dramatically.

Gradually, the gestures returned. At first with fear. Then through habit. Full restaurants came back, as did stadiums, concerts, weddings and travel. Children returned to classrooms. Offices filled again. Masks gradually disappeared from the places where they had once been compulsory. Distance stopped being a rule and became simply distance again.

But recovering normality did not mean returning to exactly the place from which society had departed. The pandemic had left behind deaths, illness, vanished businesses, exhausted workers and families learning to live with an absence. It had revealed the strengths of a healthcare system capable of multiplying its resources under extreme conditions, but also its weaknesses. It had exposed structural problems in many nursing homes and the vulnerability of an ageing population. It had demonstrated the importance of public services, while also exposing failures of coordination between different administrations. It revealed an extraordinary capacity for social adaptation and, at the same time, showed how quickly a public-health decision could become a political conflict.

It also left uncomfortable questions about information. Throughout the pandemic, citizens were asked to trust figures that changed constantly. Some discrepancies had legitimate methodological explanations; others reflected inadequate information systems, delays, shortages of testing or criteria that were not uniform. Official data were essential for monitoring the epidemic, but they were not sufficient to reconstruct its full scale. Excess mortality, death certificates, civil registries, seroprevalence studies and consolidated statistics eventually completed a picture that the daily reports could never provide on their own. The contradiction between those sources should not be erased from the history of COVID deaths in Spain. It is part of that history.

Nor should the debate over the decisions made before and during the emergency disappear. The March 8 demonstrations are part of that history, just as the Vox rally, football matches and other mass gatherings that continued while the virus was already circulating are part of it. So are the reassuring messages of the preceding weeks, the difficulties obtaining protective equipment, defective tests, decisions surrounding nursing homes, tensions between the central government and Spain’s autonomous communities, and measures that were subsequently ruled partly unconstitutional. Telling that story does not require turning every mistake into a conspiracy or every decision into negligence. It requires something simpler and more difficult: refusing to remove from memory whatever contradicts a comfortable narrative.

Because the pandemic was also a battle over the narrative while it was still happening. Governments, political parties, public administrations, scientists, news organisations and citizens were all trying to understand an event that changed from week to week. Spain’s political polarisation quickly found new territory. For some, any criticism of the government’s management became an act of irresponsibility during a national emergency. For others, every decision became evidence of incompetence or deception. Between those extremes lay a much less orderly reality: good decisions and bad ones, knowledge that changed, improvisation, professionals working at their limits, administrations that sometimes cooperated and sometimes confronted one another, citizens who followed the rules and citizens who defied them.

And beyond all those arguments were the dead. They are the measure that prevents this story from becoming merely a debate about politics, statistics or management. Behind every discrepancy between two sets of figures lies a simple question: whom are we counting, and whom are we leaving out? A person who died in a nursing home without a PCR test was no less real because that death failed to appear for weeks in a particular official count. Nor can every excess death automatically be attributed to the virus. Rigour requires accepting both realities. Human dimension and journalistic precision are not opposites. They need one another.

Perhaps that is why photographs from those months possess a particular force. An empty street does not need to explain the decree that emptied it to convey that something extraordinary was happening. A healthcare worker’s face marked by a mask after hours of work contains part of the story of the hospitals. A person looking out of a window speaks of confinement. An elderly resident isolated behind glass speaks of the nursing homes. A coffin speaks of something no epidemiological curve can show. But documentary work then has to restore context to those images: to explain why that street was empty, what was happening inside that hospital, why so many elderly people were dying and why an entire society had ended up watching the world from a window.

There was one word used constantly during those months: normality. People spoke of recovering normality, of a new normal, of moving towards it, as though normality were a physical place to which society could return. Perhaps what happened was simpler. Life gradually occupied the spaces it had abandoned. First a child returned to the street. Then came a café terrace, a visit, a family meal, a journey, a stadium, a concert, an embrace. And almost without noticing, we stopped measuring the distance that separated us from one another.

During the pandemic, we learned to move away in order to protect each other. We learned to speak from behind a mask, to recognise our neighbours from a balcony, to say goodbye through a screen and to wait for news of someone we were not allowed to visit. We also learned that a technologically advanced society could be brought to a halt within days by something it could not see. We discovered that hospitals could run out of space, that doctors could work without sufficient protection, that thousands of elderly people could become isolated inside nursing homes and that even counting the dead could become a political and statistical problem. Then we learned to move closer again. The streets recovered their noise, airports filled once more, doors opened, balconies stopped being meeting places and masks ended up forgotten in drawers and pockets until they disappeared from everyday life. Many of the old habits returned with a speed that would have seemed impossible during lockdown.

But there was a time when getting close to someone meant putting them at risk. A time when millions remained inside their homes while others went outside to keep the country running. A time when children could not embrace their parents, grandchildren looked at their grandparents through glass and too many families had to say goodbye without being there. During those months, distance had a different meaning and, for a time, loving someone meant not touching them.