Yesterday was the start of post-festive 2021 in Spain. The kids are back at school to some extent (except in Madrid!) and the authorities have been obliged to set out new regulations to replace those governing the Festive period and in force since 23rd December Just how Fuerteventura has come out of that process will follow, but here are some highlights and novelties in Greyrocks' 28th Canarian holiday period.
There were four of us here this time round - starting early as a result of Covid! Chloë and Jack's stressful arrival and strange lifestyle for the two weeks before is described in a 2019 post. After Christmas they did a bit more holiday activity often revolving around food! We went with Elaine the hairdresser and Andrew to a Sunday Quiz at Hoplaco. All possible tables were occupied and the model used there is an established one, but it was our first time! It wasn't perfect in level, scope or delivery, but we had fun and ended up in a separate one-team-at-a-time contest. We selected as a topic Hits of the Sixties and through a great team effort we won - a prize of EUR 50. There was also the prize of a bottle of wine for second (or was it third?) in the main quiz. Quids in! The public was amazed that we identified the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band!
A few days on and it was Round 3 of a Spanish Festive Season (which starts with the 6th/8th December "puente") Chloë and Jack took themselves off to Las Palmas for New Year. We booked a NYE dinner at Marquesina:- something we have done many times! It was almost the same as on all the other occasions except for greater spacing of tables and the waiters with masks. We decided to leave shortly before midnight and took our cotillóns and walked along the promenade to home. This was just in case it was crowded in the Old Town. Little did we know!
It was only two days later that the Canarian press was featuring Corralejo in the headlines. In the "Music Square" around midnight there had been mayhem - unmasked. up close, loud and not policed! The bars were closed and the authorised live music had finished. Reactions on social media were as dichotomous as expected, with our mayor saying the police had done a fine job by taking twenty minutes to mobilise from their base 200 m away! Others of us decided to give young people a wide berth for a couple of weeks!
But for Kings itself there had been plenty of time to prepare! The magi arrived on the ferry on the 5th as usual - but later in the day, and were driven around town in separate sports cars. For meeting them spaced appointments were needed and we certainly weren't going to see that! In the virtual world they pulled out all the stops.
Covid impacted also on the departure of Chloë and Jack. This was scheduled for 9th January, but the UK news was presaging testing on arrival. A sensible policy we thought - but details were few and far between! When would this start? Was the deadline based on departure or arrival? Which tests would be acceptable? Right up to the wire there was the possibility that it would be logistically impossible to be tested within 72 hours of some fixed point and yet get back a result of a PCR test performed in Corralejo. A flight change would have serious implications. Bodged plan, badly managed press releases, too little too late? Surely not from this UK government?! But they made it out as planned on one of the last flights that would not be included. We are once again empty-nesting!
And on the subject of Covid regulation chaos, we have our own - less significant - one here in our municipio of La Oliva. Up until yesterday our regime was due to be that of the whole island, and along with El Hierro and La Palma would be "green light" alert. (Tenerife is on "red" and Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and La Gomera on "amber"). But this came with a warning. In just three weeks the number of active cases had soared from around 35 to about 130. The number of deaths has remained at 4:- indicative, perhaps, of the young and fit population, but leading, perhaps, to some complacency!
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| Daily new cases on the island |
So some relief that we were not perceived as all that "bad", and the detail - 4 rather than 6 at a table and a curfew of 11 versus 12 barely mattered to anti-social old codgers like ourselves, but yesterday Ruth met Pete the neighbour and he said the restrictions were tighter, On investigation this was seen to be true:- the mayor - out of deep concern or spite depending on your point of view - had declared exceptions for our municipio - as with the live music ban - so we now have a ban on sitting anywhere inside at bars and restaurants. Now this might not "normally" be a great problem - we are after all a winter sun magnet - but God's Great Banana Skin has brought us Filomena to coincide! Greyrocks is just back from a lunch-out trip (wrapped up as never before on the island) and struggled to find a place with unoccupied tables on a windy terrace and some places just closed!
The reader in the UK will know this unwelcome visitor as "Beast from the East 2" and it may soon be with you! We have had it since 5th - arriving with the Kings - and it isn't funny! It is a borrasca - a nasty squally seaborne storm system - that has been on its way from the North Atlantic. Yesterday the pharmacy display showed 17 degrees C in the middle of the day. The squalls are often short but intense and start without notice. A great shame for the kids over the Kings holiday, and for tourists seeking refuge from their home country! But we have been lucky:- the western islands had torrential rain, and the devastating snow on the peninsula - particularly around Madrid - has not been out of the media. At least we have snow only above 1900 metres - and there's not much of that!
Oh, and Greyrocks is wrestling with planning the summer as British passport holders post-Brexit! That bit of the triple-whammy will have to wait. It's Bloody Cold
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