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| Local boy Miguel Indurain celebrates his 5th Tour de France win 25 years ago |
The virus has come
roaring back in our province because of parties. New rules this week in
our province of Navarra after big outbreaks of the virus among young
people:
- Bars and discos have to close at 2 a.m. rather than 6 a.m.
- No public drinking of alcohol is allowed on the streets between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Which must mean that in the past it WAS permitted to drink alcohol on the streets between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.
- From these new rules I conclude that after 6 a.m. you CAN drink alcohol on the streets. Is this a great country or what?
I'm
part of the Dawn Patrol at the local cafe, which opens at 6:30 a.m. during the week and 7:30 a.m. on
the weekends and has both daily newspapers. Having a coffee and reading the paper in the cafe is a ritual. I wear a mask between sips
and maintain social distance.
Up all night
The only time that young people show up
that early is if they've been out all night. In Spain, among teens and
young 20s, it has always been a thing to stay out all night with your
friends. You come home at dawn. Parents expect it. We of the Dawn Patrol
see young people only when they are staggering and talking loudly with
extravagant hand gestures. They're not dangerous because in this
country, not everyone is carrying a gun.
Big headline yesterday was that emergency room doctors were complaining that
the doctors at the local public health clinics were sending too many
routine cases to the ER. Our neighborhood clinic is doing visits over
the phone rather than in person. So if someone thinks they have
something acute, and they don't feel like the advice from the doctor
made them feel better, they might head to the ER. Both the ER docs and
the clinic docs are government employees, and the ER docs think the
clinic docs aren't pulling their weight.
Top of the front page in today's paper: it's the 25th anniversary of local boy Miguel Indurain's fifth straight Tour de France victory. His pueblo is in the Pamplona metro area so he's in the paper all the time.
Also,
on Sunday, the local football team, Osasuna, finished what for them was
a fantastic season, 10th place out of 20. This was their first year
back in the major league; each year, the three worst teams from the
first division descend, and the three best from the second division move
to the first. Every day there are at least five tabloid pages of
stories about Osasuna, the last game, the next game, the contracts, the
coach's thoughts.
"Osasuna"
, the name of the team, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary,
means "health" in Basque, in the sense of "strength" or "vigor".
With
all of the local outbreaks in the northeast of Spain, around Barcelona,
France was talking about closing the border with that province,
Catalonia.
Cindy
and I have stopped our weekend jaunts in rental cars. Partly from fun
fatigue, partly from caution. Cindy is cross-stitching and letting her
hair grow, which involves a lot of work. This week I am attending an
online symposium on online journalism from the U of Texas and writing
some blog posts about some of the sessions. The War on Journalists Intensifies and Local ownership is a Success Factor in the news business
Related:
A town in need of some consonants: Aoiz
Exploring Navarra: the source of the rivers
The walled city of Artajona and ancient burial grounds
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