Cuarentena: Stories from Spain

Celebrating Father’s Day (March 19 th ): Continuing on the theme of new sociability, Father’s Day in Spain coincides with the Liturgical Feast of Saint Joseph in the Latin Rite Catholic Church.   This is always on March 19 th . Mandatory quarantine and confinement had begun on March 14 (or 16 th depending how you count it).   So it wasn’t clear how people were going to celebrate. The solution was building upon the consolidating practice of balcony applauses and cacerolada. A traditional children’s song (“Don Pepito”) would be sung in cadence (here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJCYmHQjycs ).   It is a children’s song of call and response, two characters talking to each other:   Pepito and José (or Joe and Joseph).   All apartments in buildings with odd street numbers (11, 23, etc.) would sing the opening line, and all houses with even street numbers would respond.   While the actual singing somet...

New forms of socializing?    Given the ambience of quarantine and social distancing, many have asked what the social effects of this would be.   At this point I’m not talking about the macro social effects in terms of governance, fear of “Others”, economic effects, etc. but more simply about how social life is continuing or morphing under quarantine. Of course this will look very different in different sites and even neighborhoods, so we’ll only pass on what is happening here. From the very first (or maybe second?) night of the quarantine, on Saturday March 14 th , text messages were passed around saying to stand at your window or balcony and clap in solidarity with doctors, nurses and health care workers at 10pm.   This was massively echoed all over the country.   By the next night, the time was changed to 8pm, and it has continued and increased every night since the quarantine began 3 and a half weeks ago and counting.   A few days ...