Putting the chill on Spain’s Covid-19 hotspots

It’s 7:30 p.m. in Barcelona’s Plaça Reial, and teenagers and young adults are drinking beer and listening to live salsa music. The music electrifies the twilight.

The dangers of COVID-19 are in the air as well. Coronavirus cases in the country spiked during the summer months, but while many in the crowd are wearing masks, which are required by law, there are perhaps a dozen or so people who are not.

For Fiamma Sass, 27, and Lisbeth Encarnacion, 18, it is perfect territory to alert the unbelievers to the dangers of the potentially deadly disease. The two information workers are part of a project developed by the Spanish Red Cross to educate young people from 16 to 23 about the dangers of the virus and what measures they need to take in order to stay safe.

Spain’s second wave

Spain has been besieged with a second wave of coronavirus, driven mostly by infections among young people. According to the Spanish Health Ministry, the total number of Covid-19 cases rose to more 1,2 Million as of early November, when authorities also imposed an evening curfew aimed at reducing night-time gatherings among other measures.

“There are a lot of kids who just don’t believe that the coronavirus even exists,” says Sass. “They say ‘nothing will happen to us. We are immune.’”

In Barcelona and its surrounding area the battle ground against future infection has been in places frequented by young people: the city’s sprawling beaches, its bars and public squares. Also small towns where youth have little to do beyond hang out in public. But equally important, the battleground lives in the minds of youths themselves who often live in a state of coronavirus rebellion.

The two Red Cross workers approach a clutch of young people in the square a pair of Italian men and a young woman from Andorra all of whom are not wearing masks. The pair ask the group to guess when the information workers are standing at a two-meter distance. They are shocked to find that their idea of two meters is much shorter than reality. Later, the two information workers show them just how effective a mask is in preventing the spread of virus-infected droplets.

“There are a lot of kids who just don’t believe that the coronavirus even exists. They say ‘nothing will happen to us. We are immune.”
Spanish Red Cross volunteer Fiamma Sass

‘Virus is real’

The group takes the presentation in stride but still find ways to express some sort of conspiracy theory. “You want to know the truth?” says one young man about 30 years of age. “I think the virus is real, but there is somebody behind all of this.”

Encarnacion and Sass say such feelings are common. Since the beginning of September, the Catalan branch of the Spanish Red Cross has observed nearly 115,000 young people. Of those roughly half were wearing their masks correctly. The teams in Barcelona and all around in Catalonia have distributed roughly 70,000 masks.

Slowly the team is beginning to see changes. Information worker Najim Rahouti Allouh, 22 recalls speaking with a teenager who was about 18 years old in the city’s Gracia neighborhood. “They were acting like the entire thing was a joke,” he said.

Two weeks later, Rhjouti Allouh ran into the same group at one of Barcelona’s beaches. “When I saw them, they had their masks on,” he said. One of the boys explained. “I spoke to my mom. I realized that it was so important to be able to protect my grandmother. I can get something and give it to her.”