The second wave hits Europe.
 | By Max Strasser International Editor, Opinion |
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The past few weeks here in Britain have felt like watching a horror movie for the second time: I know where it’s going and I don’t like it any more than I did on the first viewing. Every day over my morning coffee, I open my iPad and stare at the line graph swinging upward as it makes its way across the X axis. I feel déjà vu and dread — about the stress of more lockdowns and a more constrained life, and above all, for the people I fear will die. |
Much of Europe is in the midst of the second wave. Particularly hard hit is Spain. |
During the first wave of the pandemic, Spain experienced one of the highest death tolls in Europe. Thousands of people died alone in nursing homes. (This report from back in March by Raphael Minder and Elian Peltier, my colleagues in the newsroom, sticks with me.) The government in Madrid imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe. Eventually, like in most countries (though not my home country, the United States), the virus was brought under control. Now it’s back. |
David Jiménez, a Spanish journalist and contributing writer for our Spanish-language pages, thinks he knows why. In an Op-Ed today, David argues that Spain’s recurring coronavirus problem is caused by the country’s particular political dysfunction: an insular political class, a lack of political competition within parties, a culture of blame shifting. |
He makes a compelling argument, and his piece will tell you a lot about Spain. But as I read it, I thought about the overused first line of “Anna Karenina”: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Every country that has failed to control the coronavirus is dysfunctional in its own way. The most basic job of a government is to protect its people; any country that can’t do that isn’t working. Politics in Britain and the United States don’t necessarily resemble politics in Spain, but the outcome is the same. |
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