Oh 2020, you’ve been a trip! (but not like a physical trip, since we haven’t really left our little town in more than three months…).
Just like the common experience of basically all fellow inhabitants of Earth, our last few months were dominated by the pesky coronavirus, COVID-19. It is so funny to hear little N use all these new buzzwords that weren’t part of our daily lexicon just 4 months ago, like “social distancing”, “quarantine” and “coronavirus”.
Here in Spain, we had one of the strictest lockdowns, where we spent 50 days stuck inside without any opportunity to leave our apartment, except to go to the grocery store for “essential” purchases 1-2 times per week. After 43 days, the kids were allowed out for one hour, once per day and within 1km of home. After 50 days, we were allowed out under a strict timetable for daily exercise as well, but life continued to be pretty restricted until about a month ago.
Luckily, the quarantine was pretty effective in tamping down the virus, where it is largely absent from most areas in Spain, with the exception of the big cities of Madrid and Barcelona. At this point, we can do most things we want to do within Andalucia, but can’t travel outside the autonomous region (and in fact, couldn’t leave the Granada province until last week). Life is normal with the addition of the ever-present face masks, which we are required to wear when we can’t maintain a distance of 1.5m from others (for us, that means mostly indoors). Our lifestyle is pretty outdoors- based here, so we don’t suffer much, with most restaurants having large terraces where we would typically eat anyway. Now tables are just a bit further apart.
But, let’s step back to the two months we were stuck inside and talk a bit about what that looked like. Back around March 13 when the State of Alarm was declared here in Spain, we had my parents and aunt and uncle visiting us. We hustled my aunt and uncle out of here before things locked down, and my parents decided to stay with us to ride it out (because they weren’t leaving until the end of March anyway, and no way would this thing last THAT long, right?!). My parents were staying in an apartment a few minutes away, but since we weren’t allowed to leave for ANYTHING, we quickly decided that would be a problem. So we talked to our landlord and asked if my parents could move into the empty rental apartment in our building and she agreed. With that, my parents spent most of quarantine in the apartment a floor above us. It was so nice to have them in the building, close enough to see regularly, but with their own space for their sanity and ours (but mostly theirs!). Their apartment also gave us a bit more space to roam around in, and to get an occasional change of scenery.
Our landlord also gave us a key to use the roof of the building for exercise (it is a family building, so usually they just like family to be up there), and that was a total lifesaver, since it got us outside and exercising regularly (though I did get sick going 150 times around the roof to get a few miles of walking in).
During quarantine, we found it essential to have a regular daily schedule. It changed a bit over the weeks, but basically looked like this:
- wake up and eat breakfast
- school work (the kids’ teachers here in Spain would send them work via their blog daily, and the kids also did additional english and math work)
- exercise/time on the roof (with my parents)
- free time or finish school work
- lunch (with my parents)
- give up trying to stick to a schedule and let them do whatever they are bugging us to do
- games with my parents in their apartment
- kids free time on electronics and the PS4 we bought for quarantine
- bedtime
Honestly, that was pretty much all we did for almost 2 months. My parents had a few flights scheduled, cancelled and rescheduled during that time (Delta was actually pretty flexible with them and they didn’t have any additional fees or charges for any of the changes or their eventual flight home).
Finally in late April, after more than six weeks of kids not being permitted to leave their homes (keep in mind, many kids in Spain live in apartments, often without even a balcony), the Spanish government allowed kids to leave their homes once per day for an hour per day, within 1km of home. Sadly, all the playgrounds were closed and so there wasn’t a ton for them to do, but let me assure you, the stir crazy parents weren’t giving up the chance to drag their kids outside so THEY could go for a walk too! (though only one parents was allowed out with up to 3 kids at a time).
A few weeks later, adults were allowed to go out during specific time slots to exercise or walk (within 1km of home). Thus, started our de-escalation, which is scheduled to continue through June 21, when we arrive at the so-called “New Normal”.
Meanwhile, my parents finally got flights back to the US for the beginning of May, and by then, we felt like they might actually have a chance of the logistics working out. So, they got a taxi (before this point, only one person was allowed per taxi, so they would have had to taken 2 taxis) for the one-hour ride to the Malaga train station (typically they would fly from Malaga to Madrid, but the Malaga airport had virtually no flights flying, and none to Madrid), where they took a near empty train to Madrid.
From the Madrid train station, they got another taxi to one of the few hotels in the country that the government had approved to stay open during the quarantine, to stay overnight in preparation for their flight the next day. From Madrid, they flew to Amsterdam (on a fairly full flight – no empty middle seats, but everyone had to wear a mask), then had a few hours layover until their (fairly empty) flight back to Atlanta. Once they arrived in the US, they were given a little card with suggestions that they self-quarantine or at least social distance, but had no other checks. I know they were happy to finally get home, but thoroughly enjoyed their longer-than-expected stay with us.
Overall, I would say the strict lockdown was worth it, since the virus is pretty well contained and things are nearly back to normal in Spain. However, we are now approaching summer, the high tourist season is our little town, and the point where we usually head out of town.
In fact, our apartment isn’t available to us in the summer, since it is rented as a short-term holiday rental. So, with everything up in the air this year, we aren’t quite sure what we are going to do this summer. We are trying to find options for keeping a homebase here this summer, but, despite tourism being down, prices are sky high! (can’t fault the spanish for their optimism – one in the hand is NOT worth two in the bush for them. Or, not worth 100 flying, as they say in Spanish).
Did I mention that we are two weeks away from being without somewhere to live? Nope, not stressed at all. We are continually being frustrated by the worst (in our opinion) aspect of living in Spain, which is dealing with the inefficiencies of how they do business. Don’t dare try to send an email (even to a company whose ENTIRE PURPOSE is to sell and rent properties) and expect a response, cause it ain’t happening. You must call (not fun, with our “developing” Spanish speaking and comprehension skills) or, ideally, go in person (but keep in mind, their office may not be where it says it is, and if it is, you better not go before 10am or after 1:30pm, because they probably won’t be open).
Even if you do make initial contact with them, and enquire about a specific property, should that property not be available, don’t expect them to take the initiative to suggest other similar properties to you, because THEY WON’T. Also, if there is a potential property and it may potentially be available, but there is some follow up required, like talking to the owner or figuring out when the current tenants are leaving, don’t expect them to actually get back to you because THEY WON’T. Your best bet is to employ some multi-faceted method of stalking to include regular WhatsApp messages, phone calls and surprise pop-ins (if their business actually exists and is in the place it is supposed to be), in the hopes of making progress. Hopefully, this method will result in success, but we can’t tell you for sure, BECAUSE WE STILL DON’T HAVE ANYWHERE TO LIVE YET!
Here are our leads so far:
- a house that was supposed to be available at the beginning of June, but for some reason the current tenants haven’t left (they blame something about the virus, but one is always free to return to their home, so not sure why they couldn’t leave), and the managers are uncertain when they are leaving and seemingly unwilling to make them go, despite us wanting to move in AND PAY MORE
- a house that is rented for just a few weeks in the summer, so we can’t rent, even though we want a full year rental for them. The owners won’t take a guaranteed full year rent, because they hope that the house will become fully booked at the higher short-term rental price (they are going with the “2 in the bush” or “100 flying”), because “they lost money when it sat empty during lockdown” (so if the virus were to come back, what is the best way to guarantee their income stream? a long-term tenant. but trying explaining that to them…)
- A stuffy, non-air conditioned apartment with furniture circa the 1950s, except a spare tv sitting in closet, which is much newer, being from the 1990s. This apartment is located in a noisy part of town and is being offered at only 3x our normal rental price. By far our cheapest option, but honestly my soul dies when I enter the apartment and neither C or I could stand the thought of staying there.
- Short-term options booked through Airbnb, which would run around 10x our normal monthly rate, many of which we still can’t get for the full summer.
- A few potential cortijos, or country houses (think rustic), that we can get for a reasonable price, but must be booked for the full year. These are too far out of town to live in during the year, so after summer, we would just end up with our apartment in town, along with a weekend house. How Spanish of us!
- Packing everything we can fit into the back of our car, throwing the rest in the mildew-inducing basement of our apartment building and taking off on a road trip for the summer, uncertain of what will be open, and frankly, what borders we will be allowed to cross.
Where do you think we will end up? Your guess is as good as mine!
In summary, here is what we learned during quarantine:
- we
wantneed a house with a yard - we need a home base that we have year round, and don’t HAVE to move out of if we don’t want to
- it is important to have a stockpile whole wheat flour, baking powder and hand sanitizer
- there is such a thing as too much family time
If you can’t wait to find out what we do for the summer, be sure to follow us on Instagram. It takes a lot less time and energy to post there than on the blog, so chances are we will update there first.
We hope everyone is doing okay, wherever you are in the world, and remind everyone to wear your masks and social distance!
