Madrid, the City That Wouldn’t Lock Down | Wall Street Journal - Adam O'Neal:
December 2, 2021 - "Isabel Díaz Ayuso ... was sworn in as president of the Community of Madrid — analogous to a U.S. state governor — in August 2019. By February 2020 the novel coronavirus was spreading throughout Spain. The country quickly became among the hardest hit in the world, with Madrid at the center of the crisis. In March 2020 the regional government ordered the closure of schools and most shops before the central government did so nationally.
"'We were the region that warned the rest of Spain that we had to act against Covid because no decisions were being made,' Ms. Díaz Ayuso tells me in Spanish during a recent interview. 'The first wave was very hard.... It is true that back then nothing was known about Covid,” she continues. 'I believe that the difference in management comes after the second, third wave, when one must have learned'... But as fall approached, the number of cases rose again. 'When everyone was asking to close, with no alternatives, we decided to go against the virus, not the people.
"I arrived in Madrid in October 2020, fleeing an impending lockdown in Germany, and stayed until April. Bars often seemed as full as they were during pre-pandemic visits, and the city center was buzzing with holiday shoppers. I visited offices filled with workers. Playgrounds echoed with the sounds of schoolchildren at play. Meantime, Catalonia’s regional government shut down its bars in mid-October, while in November the Valencian government imposed stringent capacity restrictions on churches, restaurants and stores. Countries like the U.K., France and Germany also imposed lockdowns and stay-at-home orders of varying severity.
"The hospitality industry — one of Spain’s most economically and socially important — flourished in Madrid. Earlier this year it became the Spanish region with the most hospitality workers.... Some restrictions remained, including a curfew, neighborhood-based controls on movement, and a mask mandate, strangely even outdoors..... It was rare to see someone outside with an uncovered face, and plenty continued to wear masks after the mandate was narrowed to apply indoors only.
"Europeans may have a lower standard of 'pandemic freedom' than Americans, but the lockdown-fatigued public rewarded Ms. Díaz Ayuso’s People’s Party during regional elections in May. She campaigned on the simple slogan 'freedom' — previously 'communism or freedom' —and it worked. The party doubled its share of the electorate from two years earlier, finishing with a million votes more than its nearest competitor. Such electoral success has made Ms. Díaz Ayuso the most prominent conservative politician in Spain and prompted speculation about her as a potential challenger to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, a Socialist....
"She says Madrid got back on its feet 'around the values of freedom, of prosperity. It has been an example. In fact, the May 4 elections are an example for a lot of countries.' Covid-19 devastated the Spanish capital, but several regions have faced more deaths per capita. Critically, the results suggest voters understand that a locked-down economy has public-health implications as well.
"'I believe in freedom in all aspects of life. And against everything that tyrannizes and enslaves the person—against addictions, against the identity division between man-woman, left-right, rich-poor. That is what the communist ideology often does, always seeking to collectivize the person and control them from above,' she says. 'Responsibility and freedom is what I think there has to be.'
"Masks are still required indoors in Madrid. But unlike in France or Italy, restaurant and bar patrons don’t need to show a Covid health pass to enter. I texted a Díaz Ayuso adviser this week to ask whether the Omicron variant had changed the government’s calculations. 'It hasn’t changed our plans,' he wrote back. 'We continue to choose to go against the virus with vaccination, testing and individual responsibility instead of the policy of closure for the sake of closure.'"
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