Madrilenians savor the taste of freedom
Madrid, Saturday,
Madrid's fiery leader is reaping the rewards of her controversial policy of minimal Coronavirus restrictions in Spain's capital. Díaz Ayuso, the conservative chief of Spain's capital region turned Madrid into an exception to Europe's fierce Coronavirus lockdown policy, where bars, restaurants, museums and even concert halls remained open.
A leader with a taste for the gamble
Hailed as a flag-bearer of Spain's anti-lockdown movement, Señora Ayuso (42) argued that the lessons from the first wave taught her team that lockdowns were damaging to the economy and to the mental wellbeing of many citizens.
The public health crisis nonetheless has helped transform Díaz Ayuso from an inexperienced politician who raised eyebrows with her off-the-cuff comments in front of cameras, to a defiant figure who picked up on the very real anger of Spanish families kept under one of the harshest lockdown regimes in the world in force since mid-March. In the first few weeks, Spaniards could hardly set foot outside and their children were kept indoors.
Three months later, events have tended to support Diaz Ayuso's gamble. Infections are up in Spain but well below levels in countries such as France, the Netherlands or Poland. As a Spanish lockdown skeptic told one UK newspaper, it was a price well worth paying to regain our freedoms.
"Madrid's population density means that if we had a zero level of infection, people wouldn't have a living. So we've opted for an intermediate model that's working so that people can go on living their lives and aren't ruined for life…"
Choosing "freedom" over "calamity"
Señora Ayuso became the scourge of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. Even as Sánchez told Spaniards to prepare for "the state of calamity" "Freedom" became Ayuso's campaign motto, the single word fluttering on her party's banners, as she banked on her alternative COVID strategy to appeal to voters tired of restrictions.
Sánchez felt he had no choice, having listened to alarming warnings by Spanish scientists, among them virologist Antoni Trilla, in which data from Facebook and a specially created mathematical model pointed unambiguously to the possibility that intensive care units (ICUs) could be pushed to breaking point in less than 15 days. Salvador Illa, a member of the Catalonia Socialist Party (PSC) and a philosophy graduate called for "hibernation" of the economy, a strict lockdown, following "a Middle Ages model".
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