That time I moved to France and didn’t blog about it: preparing to move abroad during a pandemic

2020 will be the year that the world stopped for so many. But for me, it’s the year I got to live in France.

France was a lovely little séjour, despite those pesky aspects of living abroad. Every pain au chocolat  reminded me of being 16 and traveling around France with my grandfather, every new word learned was a small personal victory to untrain myself from Spanish while slowly making sense of street signs and school communications. In a year where no one traveled, a summer of exploring a new home base became our salve, the balm that soothed away all the scary stuff and ever-present threat of the virus.

Lyon France old town in a storm

We spent six months living in Écully, a wealthy village of 18,000 people just west of Lyon. The largest park was on the grounds of an old château (now home to Lyon’s premiere cooking school and the only hospitality school restaurant in France to hold a Michelin star), the village church and Liberté-Fraternité-Egalité-emblazoned mairie anchoring a small downtown that was once the carriage route to St-Etienne. It wasn’t Belle’s Alsace but it was pretty damn cute, the homes named for flowers, doors overgrown with lilacs and ivy and random châteaus hidden behind apartment complexes.

I didn’t blog. The attempt to jot down a vignette or two every week suddenly seemed a momentous task after a day trying to fumble through French and not get lost and perfect a quiche lorraine. I truthfully didn’t want to find the time to do it. And now, half a year since we returned to Spain, I am ready to talk about it. And, truthfully, I don’t want to forget.

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I have been a Francophile since I was a kid. Maybe it was growing up reading Madeline, or my mother’s obsession with French silk. I begged her to let me learn French at a fancy sleepaway camp in Minnesota, something I’d read about in a magazine. She scoffed that I could go to the park district camp and wade in a creek instead of drowning myself in baguettes.

By the time I was 13, she signed the permission form to let me start language classes – Spanish. I got the last laugh when I married a Spaniard and Nancy lost me to the mother continent.

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Lyon. While Paris has long swooned me, I fell deeply in love with Lyon. The city is home to the second largest urban area in France, crowned by the Monts d’Or and framed by the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers.  Les gones – a nickname given to the lyonnaises – are comme si-comme ça about all things Parisian, crown themselves as the gastronomic capital of France and have witnessed some of France’s most emblematic events. The Romans. The Gauls. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The Lumière brothers. Jean Moulin. Paul Bocuse.

Mon dieu, I was in love with this place before even looking for flights, much less asking permission to work from another country. I would wind my way through the streets of the Croix-Rousse like the old canuts, dine in every restaurant Bourdain had stopped in on Parts Unknown and pick up my produce and cheeses that reeked of grass and the countryside at the Saturday morning market. I had dreamed of living in France since kids were learning French on tapes, and it was finally happening. Quelle aventure, la France!

March 2020

As the weather warmed, so did my urge to get planning. When I first moved to Spain, fresh out of college, I literally left just about everything to chance. I had spent a few days in Seville and knew I liked it, but the prospect of living there didn’t register when I was subsiding off of gazpacho in the July heat as a study abroad student.

We interviewed with a relocation company that specialized in expats one afternoon. As the Novio’s job as a civil servant got a delightful smirk, hearing I was American and hadn’t yet mentioned the prospect of moving was troublesome to her. Add in two kids who needed schooling and a budget during a housing crisis, and she declined to work with us. I was aghast: someone was refusing our euros?

Little did I know just how much I would hear the word non when we eventually got to France that summer.

Well, then the rest of March 2020 happened, and I promptly cancelled my trip to the U.S. that summer and planned on an été français.

April – May

One silver lining of the pandemic is that housing options suddenly opened up, meaning that the offerings were suddenly ours for the picking. We weighed commute against price against outdoor space (post-pandemic trauma is real) and found a suitable place in Écully. I loved its proximity to the city of Lyon and the village’s town center; my husband loved that it was 1.5 km from the autoroute and only 20 minutes to his new headquarters.

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After we’d booked our house, schooling for Millán suddenly got solved, too. I had long heard the praises of the public education system in France, but that a spot at a crèche was about as difficult as getting one at an elite preschool in New York City. I took to Facebook as any old millennium would and immediately found a Facebook group called Españoles en Lyon.

Un tal Fulanito messaged me, un voisin d’Écully by way of Huesca, and he sent me the inscription forms, detailed information about timetables and the names of a few good places to check in town. On a whim,  I called one, not even realizing that there was a crèche a lot closer to our new digs.

“Âlo?”

I tried, in French, to ask about inscriptions. She told me someone would call back (I think), and he did (thank goodness), but it wasn’t until he wrote me an email that I thought to ask if he spoke Spanish or English. François (“me llama Ud. Paco, s’il vous plaît!“) was half Spanish, with an andalusian surname.

As it turned out, the woman who appealed to the mayor, Mme. Parfait, had called that morning to ask how many spaces François would need, and if I could just send the baby’s birth certificate and our proof of housing, he would ask for a five-day spot for Millán.

This.could.not.be.more.perfect.

Ville d'Écully

It was all falling into place. Enrique’s school was LITERALLY across the street, and Millán had somehow gotten a spot (COVID, you fickle bitch). We had a home, my Spanish to French translations had arrived, and I could finally start dreaming about ma via française.

I bought tickets for July 2, direct to Lyon from Seville.

June

As Seville began to awaken and we could finally leave our homes, that travel-panic mode kicked in. I still hadn’t learned any French and, despite having everything seemingly under control, I’d never been more wound up. The pandemic definitely made my anxiety shine hot and bright, and my family was often on the receiving end of grunts and shouts. We made tentative plans to come back in late October, when Enrique would have a school break, so I dutifully packed our bags for the summer and early fall, chose a few toys and books and helped the Novio pack the car.

He arrived to Écully on June 23, found the nearest supermarket, his way to work and a few other Spanish families. I moved in with his parents, juggling the kids and work while tip-toeing around my father-in-law’s schedule. As I was sending out an email invitation to 40,000 juniors in high school, I received an email from Transavia that my flight had been cancelled.

I rebooked on Air France for the same day, via de Gaulle, forwarding my mother-in-law the tickets to print.

Oye, niña: Millán’s name is spelled incorrectly, she announced as she passed them to me.

I was aghast. HOW could this be happening? She shooed the kids away while I called Air France. And waited. And waited. In a post-COVID world, there were so few operators that I was on hold for hours before the agent told me I’d have to call Air France in France. Cue more hours on the phone, a credit card that had reached its limit, my American card assuming the purchase was fraudulent and the tickets on July 2 selling out. I was nervous that borders would close just as soon as they’d opened up, so I hastily booked us onto the July 4th flight via Paris. It was three times as much as I’d paid on Transavia originally, and my privilege was on full display right then and there. I could afford to book and rebook – what would it be like fleeing for our lives when I was crying over an extra two days in Spain?

July

We made it to July 4th. As my mother-in-law helped me wheel the bag to the check-in counter at the Seville airport, I felt a sense of relief that we were almost there, that my gumption (or truly just my stubbornness) had got us this far. Millán slept the whole flight to Paris, waking up as we touched down. The airport terminal was practically a ghost town, but that didn’t stop my kids from rolling around on the ground, sticking their suckers on every surface and pulling their masks down.

Let me remind you that the early summer months was a very small breath of air, like breaking to the surface after being underwater. There is the awareness that the virus is still circulating freely but no one has really, fully let down their guard.

Breathe, Cat. You will be fine.

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Only NO ONE in France was wearing a mask when we arrived. The enormous Carrefour in Grand Ouest didn’t enforce them until later in the month when cases began to climb. Vieux Lyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site and huge tourist draw, merely suggested wearing them indoors. My family were the only weirdos masking up unless we were eating because we didn’t want to be assholes (and we didn’t know enough French to survive a hospital setting – despite everyone needing a hospital but me during our stay).

But WE WERE IN FRANCE.

I got to exploring the village in our first days, not wanting to spoil Lyon by going without the Novio. We found all of the bakeries, slowly working from one end of the display case to the other, with me clumsily ordering coffee. The betting house had cheap beers, so we stopped there after the park for Super Bocks and a sirop, the French version of a soft drink, for the kids. I even got a loyalty card at Picard for frozen foods.

Le (merde de la CAF)

One morning, we marched over to the town hall and asked to speak to the woman in charge of school assignments. She was impressed that I had gotten my documents translated to French and – voilà, Madame – gave me the cell phone number of his Spanish-speaking teacher, who wrote me an email that same afternoon.

I called François at crèche and asked about the adaptation process for Millán and how to complete his registration. Do you have the CAF? he probed, telling me that he could not finalize the process nor tell us how much we would owe for care until he did.

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And thus began the two-month odyssey into getting Millán registered for daycare. The CAF, or the caisse des allocations familiales, is the social services body that serves families and young people, often giving rebates according to salary. When creating an account online to request our family allowance, I realized I’d need a French phone number. That was easy. I’d also need a French bank account. Every bank we tried told us no – either because of U.S. tax laws, or because I’d tried to get a bank account without my husband’s signature (who could guess that the patriarchy in France was more dominant than in Spain?). One flat out refused because he said our short stay was not worth his time. The Novio was frustrated by having to take time off of work, and the CAF refused our Spanish bank number.

There was a bright spot: when we stopped by LCL, a woman heard us discussing the situation in Spanish. Odiel, a widow who had lived in Écully her whole life, offered to accompany us to other banks as a translator and quickly became a friend.

By the end of July, we had finally succeeded in opening a compte nickel, which is an account that is typically reserved for refugees before they are fully established. We kept the minimum amount – 20€ – in the account and paid Enrique’s school cantine through school intranet.

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Bank account and French number in hand, I applied for the CAF number online and went to Social Services to request help. After 10 minutes of bank and forth and calling another social services office, I was told to stop the following morning for a doctor’s appointment and to speak to the official in charge of the CAF in town. We were getting somewhere! I treated myself and the kids to macarons as the church bells rang. Because it was noon. And, just like Spain, everything closed in the middle of the afternoon.

The following morning, I showed up at the Maison de la Metropole, a trailer in the middle of a dirt lot. We saw a doctor, who spoke enough English to give my kids a clean bill of health and a few hints about the CAF, and then said they’d be closed for the entire month of August. Damn, Europe.

August

When I wasn’t dealing with bureaucrazy, Millán turned a year old and began walking, we spent a lot of time on our terrace and in the yard with the neighbors and finally exploring the city’s museums, parks and bakeries.

It could have been easy to mourn the loss of our summer in the U.S., but every weekend brought the opportunity to see how much we could cram into 48 hours. The hilltop Dauphinais castle at Allymés, followed by a walk around Pérouges. Down to Grenoble and to Vienne. We even made it to Geneva on our wedding anniversary and to the Black Forest to celebrate our birthdays. The weekdays meant working while Millán napped and spending the afternoons somewhere – often a park, a château or a park next to a château.

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Enrique woke up most mornings asking, “Where are we going today, Mommy?” My intrepid three-year-old definitely takes after his mother.

I would occasionally meet other families at the park who spoke English, or who I could cobble together our basic story. But my very Spanish children couldn’t muster getting out of the house before noon, which meant that the parks were often for us while families had their midday meal.

September

In late August, I took Millán to the adaptation days for the crèche. It was lovely to meet François, who was gracious but told me it was impossible to do anything without the CAF because the computer system wouldn’t let him input information.

In the meantime, I looked for childcare options for Millán. Getting an assmat, or an assitante maternelle, was also impossible without the CAF, and the micro crèche in town was 800€ for five days, part-time (we pay 280€ for full-time in Seville). I took to Facebook again, where we found a lovely nanny who had lived in Chicago before coming to Europe, and she watched the kids each Wednesday and on school holidays. Oh, yes – Enrique had no school on Wednesdays, so I decided to keep Millán home, too. My kids adored Natalia, and as Millán napped, we got to know one another over tea.

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Taking Enrique to his new classroom on September 1 was a slow, steady build up to a taste of freedom. For nearly six months, they’d been my little shadows. It was hard to work, to exercise, to sleep with the constant interruptions of kids. But it was also bittersweet after six months of new adventures, new milestones and time to grow as a family unit.

François called shortly after the start of the term and told me that we’d been given a provisional CAF number but had to present a number of documents. So, it was back to Maison de la Metropole, but I asked the Novio to come with one of his French coworkers for assistance. They took our documents, bank statements, copies of our family book and maybe two years off our lives due to stress, but we were finally given a provisional CAF number that was set to expire on December 31.

The next step was to petition for the spot to the mayor, who would have to cover any extra expenses if we weren’t able to pay for the schooling. At the end of September, I had both boys in school four days a week. Formidable, non?

October

Some time in mid-October, I suddenly felt adapted. I didn’t rely on my GPS or I didn’t fumble over my words at daycare to tell them when Millán had woken up (only to discover, a month later, that I had reversed word order). The library and children’s center recognized my children as les americains. I learned that the 69 on the license plates corresponded to the metropolitan district. Auverge-Rhône-Alpes shrunk to the Rhône shrunk to the le Metropole to le Grand Ouest and to Écully. Our world seemed small yet expansive simply because it was different.

We’d been to the big draws, and I jotted down small museums and villages to visit in our second half. There were wine harvests and film fests, and we’d hardly ventured to what Lyon offered further away from the Presqu’île.

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“They’ll never shut our museums or cinemas, pas les choses culturelles,” they whispered. Enrique was home on a Tuesday, thanks to the ever-present vacances in the French school system. We said goodbye to his sitter and I stuffed him quickly into the car, got some McDo and found a spot to park in Vieux Lyon. Another lockdown was imminent so I wanted to take him to see one more Guignol. A distant relative of Punch & Judy, Monsieur Guignol is the beloved lyonnais puppet whose shows were social commentary on the buttoned-up Catholic society in the early 20th Century. We loved him. The theatre was packed, and Enrique sat on a shallow, overturned bucket as Guignol outwitted the evil proprietor of Club Sandwich to get the francs that he owed Mama Swing, who didn’t even have money for a hotel and was forced to sleep out in the cold.

We ended the outing with ice cream from René Nardonne next to a slate grey river. It was the last time we’d be able to eat at a restaurant, but we were told one month until freedom and culture and normal life. You know, to save Christmas.

November

I held out hope that my December holidays could be cashed in on a museum day and eating somewhere on my ever-longer list. I had to laugh: my Spanish cellphone company informed me I’d start paying roaming on November 3, so I only used WIFI while at home (and I was ALWAYS home). We stopped spending money on entertainment, instead using our allotted one hour out of the house, time-stamped attestation in hand, to see how much of our one kilometer perimeter we could trace.

Life became mundane – gads! boring! – while in France. But we were in FRANCE. Where only the self-proclaimed gastronomic capital could have outrageous prices on every piece of produce but cabbage and fish that tasted like freezer burn at a fine dining restaurant. It rained every day and eventually the neighbor’s geese stopped honking.

December

I called Menchu on Tuesday afternoon to see if she was free. The Confluence mall, with its cheap parking and endless dining options, was our halfway point, a merging of both our rivers and our families and our shared experience. “Jo, muero para tomar un café” Starbucks and a long stroll to the car became a simple taste of freedom and we joked about how Madrid was wide open to the French, but we couldn’t venture further than 15 kilometers from our homes.

Christmas tree at l´Hotel de Ville

The month went by quickly. Packing, purging, eating through whatever was in our freezer. We planned for a Christmas with Ángel, Menchu and their children but prepared for a feast at home. The pandemic brought out the resourcefulness in me: we made wreaths out of paper plates, a nativity from a 12-pack box of Kronenburg. My car battery died, and I could somehow find a place to get it replaced after buying Christmas presents at Carrefour. The days ticked down, and it made me sad to think of the experience we had lost by moving abroad during a pandemic. For my husband, it was six months of torture. For me, it was six months of reminding myself how exciting everyday life can be.

C’est fini

As we pulled away from Chemin du Chancilier shortly before the end of 2020, I bouncily told my eldest to wave goodbye to his school out the window. Au revoir, Stèphane! Au revoir, petite section! He asked for the tablet as I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes. Down we went on the A-6, crossing the Presqu’île on a needle-thin bridge before turning south on the A-7, the gastronomic motorway between Paris and Marseille. Out past the refineries, the shabby outskirts, snaking down the Rhône towards the Mediterranean.

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I left Lyon with a heavy heart. Maybe it’s because Millán began walking here, and Enrique got his first stitches as I held his hand and looked away (and onto the Château d’Annecy, what!?!?!?). Maybe because it was my chance to live in a country that has forever captured my heart, even if the chance to really do it right was muffled by a global pandemic (can we say it again? Fuck COVID). Maybe because I need some challenge on a more regular basis.

When you meet people and know that your connection to them is fleeting, every minute seems important. François. Odiel. Julie. Menchu. Natalia. I have been overwhelmed with the generosity and warmth of the few people we have met and even wrote the mayor a thank you note to express my gratitude that he saved Millán that spot at the crèche.

Into 2021

What I may have liked best about those six months in France was how simple our days seemed. Even in the ho-hum of daily life, even when we were shuttered away, once more, in our homes, I couldn’t shake the tingly magical feeling. That we’d weathered a global pandemic, only to find ourselves more willing to try something new, to explore. And there were no extra distractions: no doctors appointments or social engagements, not always running off to see something and snap a few pictures. We had the space to grow together as a family over meals, trying to make sense of French pop songs and their odd music videos (Je te voie, Julièn Doré) or testing out all the snacks at the gas station as we visited little villages or explored further afield. I find myself craving the butter and cheese crackers that cost more than a 12-packs of cans of 1664 beer as I type.

There are little things about Lyon that have stayed with us: Millán’s favorite stuffed animal is called his beloved doudou, and Enrique’s birthday cake was a whimsical take on Guignol. We tend towards camembert when we can find it. I bought a six-pack of 1664 just because (I definitely didn’t get it for the taste) and work to French pop.

“You know we’ve been home for six months already.” The Novio is right, anything post-pandemic lockdown seems to have passed at warp speed since.

St Jean church Lyon

Home is where we are truly anchored. What we brought to France fit into my car, underneath kid feet or jammed into the crevices between seats. I brought a cheap bottle of Beaujolais jeune in Oignt on our third and final trip to that beautiful little village, and maybe we will drink it some day and reminisce about that time were were foules enough to move to a foreign country during a pandemic.

Yes, it was disappointing in many ways. I didn’t get the full experience I had been dreaming about since reading about the girl who lived in an old house in Paris, covered in vines. The French I learned was by way of a little green owl. The boys missed swim class and play dates and even catching a last guignol show.

Je ne sais pas, I still can’t put my finger on what France was. As the days fade into summer, as we plan for the long, hot months and the upcoming school year, I pine for it. Life seemed simple, simply because we had one another and a good rind of cheese and the balmy summer nights watching the sun set over the old farmhouse next door.

Am I vraiment folle for moving abroad during a pandemic? What other topics should I cover about Lyon or France?

Seville, with COVID: A touristic darling devoid of tourists

It cuts through the exhaust fumes that hiccup from a bus, from the poop left by a horse stalling at an empty carriage in the shade of an orange tree. The azahar is blooming, the de facto sign of springtime in Seville.

Mateos Gago and the Giralda in Seville

The midday bells are about the shrill from the Giralda. I duck into shady Plaza Santa Marta, where the overgrown trees send lines of light against whitewashed walls and the stone cross. It’s one of those places on the tourist drag that no one seems to know about, hidden deep in a maze of streets in the city’s old Jewish quarter.

Plaza Santa Marta Sevilla

The bells sound, clear and solitary – there are no clipping hooves or megaphones or even cars.

Mateos Gago has been paved over, a pedestrian paradise for whenever it is that the tourists will return. But half of the storefronts sit empty – there are no tourist shops, and only the mainstays of Peregil, Patio San Eloy and Cervecería Giralda, which recently made headlines because of the Arabic hammam found during recent restoration work, are open.

The sevillano Disneyland of Santa Cruz is a ghost town.

 

Barrio Santa Cruz Sevilla

¡Sevilla para los sevillanos! they always say. But then one realizes the extent of destruction that the castle in the sky that the city on the Guadalquivir built. A city built on tourism will fall when the tourists aren’t coming.

Helen and I sit under an awning on the breezy afternoon. It’s been more than a year since we’ve seen one another, so we chatter away in English as if we’d had a coffee together last week.

Empty bar on Mateos Gago Sevilla

“Hello my friends!” A sevillano, patillas and gominola and all, smokes a cigarette nearby as I move the stroller out of his way. “No, no, please! Please do the work!” The work is feeding a baby but we humor him as his wife, above us on the first floor, shouts down that his English is shit. “You like my city?”

I point out that he’s wearing a mask emblazoned by the flag of Extremadura with “extremeño” embroidered (of course it’s embroidered) on one side. Helen points out that we’re locals.

He looks as though he’s been sweating on the only cool afternoon we’ve seen in the city this month but starts in on his life story: an extremeño whose family sells pork products to many of the tourist-catering eateries on Mateos Gago. Judging by how empty those bars are, I can imagine he’s had a tough year.

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But he continues exuberantly, listing off his wares as if he were entertaining a moonstruck guiri over a cervecita in Plaza Salvador: “…sausage, ham with the black foot, white wine, the sweet and the dry, whateveryoulikeeh!…”

Seville has succumb in the last dozen years. Menus are in English (and French, and Italian, and German). Souvenir shops have elbowed out the neighborhood staples. A city that prides itself on lo castizo y lo popular is becoming a place where you can hear a puño of languages on any given street of Barrio Sant Cruz. In my early days, hearing English was a momento for rejoicing, not eye rolling.

Triana and a great number of its mainstays have weathered the pandemic that brought the world to a near standstill. El Centro has not.

El torero. La flamenca con la guitarra. Ese es el imagen que vendemos a los extranjeros. Es lo que les llama la atención. The guide at Casa Fabiola doesn’t realize that the last to join her 12:30 tour is extranjera as she takes us through the Fundación Bellver pieces painted by foreign artists. The bullfighter. The flamenco dancer with a guitar. That is the image we sell to foreigners. This is what gets their attention.

Calles Cruces Sevilla

Maybe it’s alegría, it’s joie de vivre that you should be selling us. Where are noontime libation is taken in a bar that once housed an Arabic bath. Where sobremesa is a way of life. Where a city sealed off to the world (and anyone outside of the province for the time being) is both a death sentence and a nirvana for locals.

I breathe in the azahar once more. Like the empty streets of Santa Cruz, I know it is fleeting.

Traveling to Madrid during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Practical advice for visiting the Spanish capital

The azahar is blooming ever so faintly, carrying its intoxicating scent right to my home office. It’s been exactly a year since the government in Spain locked us in our homes for seven weeks at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s the scent of spring – hope, new beginnings and the promise of brighter days.

As the world begins to open back up, we are all traveling dreaming. Moving to Lyon for half a year was a salve for me, balm to cure my travel bug temporarily. But for someone who always has half a dozen places in mind for my next trip, there is really only one destination I am yearning to go to: Madrid. Both on a professional level and a personal one, I am looking forward to jumping on the high-speed train, booking into a COVID-certified hotel in Madrid and walking the streets of Chamberí – mask on and with caution.

If you’re traveling to Madrid during the COVID-19 pandemic, there are a few things to keep in mind so that you stay safe and healthy while respecting both national and local laws.

While the federal government is anchored in Madrid, many of the granular level decisions about activities, tourism and commerce during the pandemic are delegated to the 17 regional governments. For this reason, Madrid’s curfew is at 11pm whereas Andalucía’s is at 10pm. The city of Madrid is found within a region of the same name (la Comunidad de Madrid).

The most current information can be found on the Comunidad de Madrid’s COVID-19 information page (Spanish). Here are the highlights at the time of publication:

Vaccination and Vaccination Passports

Vaccination groups are determined by regional governments, though the Spanish government pays for and distributes the doses to them according to population. The federal government recently halted inoculations of AstraZeneca for an undetermined amount of time. April will be a month that determines the rhythm of vaccinations, and the Spanish government has announced that its goal is 70% or more of the population immune by September.

Currently, there is no need to present a vaccination passport.

Mobility Restrictions

At the moment, borders to the Comunidad de Madrid remain open, and the Comunidad will not close them despite encouraging citizens to limit movement unless necessary.

best churros in Seville

If you need to move in or out of a restricted ZBS, you will need a permission slip. Justified reasons include to attend a doctor’s appointment, for work or for educational purposes, or to care for another person who cannot take care of themselves.

Note: Madrid will be closed during the weekend of the Feast of Saint Joseph (Wednesday, March 17 through Sunday, March 21) and Holy Week (Friday, March 26 through Thursday, April 9).

Transportation

metro of Madrid

Madrid is a wonderful city for walking, and this is arguably the safest form of transportation. You can also rent a bike through BiciMadrid or a private outfitter, grab an Uber or local taxi on Cabify or use the Renfe commuter trains, Metro de Madrid or red city buses to get around. Contactless payment is preferred, masks are required and each mode of transport operates at a lower maximum occupancy with additional reinforcements at peak hours.

Dining and meeting with others

madrid-sunset-from-the-roof

Having visitors over to your home is still expressly forbidden, but social groups are allowed in small numbers: outdoors, you can be up to six people, whereas indoors are limited to four. Restaurant occupancy in Madrid is set to 50% indoors and 75% on terraces, restaurants are open for business until 11pm but cannot accept new diners after 10pm; takeaway options can continue to serve until midnight.

Shops

Shops and large shopping centers can be open during the day at up to 50% occupancy, so long as they are closed by 10 p.m. Exceptions to this would be any sort of business that is considered essential, such as pharmacies, vets or gas stations.

What to do in Madrid during the pandemic

Madrileños are having a field day enjoying their city in a springtime with fewer crowds. Theatres, movie theatres and cultural attractions can have up to 75% of their maximum occupancy filled, and large venues, 40%. Typical holiday celebrations have been postponed this year but Madrid boasts expansive parks, world-class museums and plenty of street life. Visit the official Madrid Tourism page to check what’s open and happening.

Madrid Plaza Mayor

You can also enjoy the province, so long as the ZBS is open.

As always, take normal precautions: wear a mask (it’s the law), socially distance, wash your hands frequently and don’t travel or go out of your home if you’re experiencing any symptoms compatible with COVID-19.

Traveling may be far from your mind, even with the long Holy Week celebrations around the corner. It’s really a double-edged sword: Spain’s tourism sector is reeling after an entire year (and more!) lost, yet it’s not wise to be free-wheeling . When it’s safe, I will be back in La Capi, gladly revisiting all of the places that made our years in Madrid special.

This post was written and published on March 17, 2021. At the time of publication, all information was current.

This post is in collaboration with Hotels.com, but all opinions are my own.

COVID-19 in Seville: Scenes from a lockdown lifted

Fifty days.

Fifty days in my home, stealing quick trips to the garbage bins and the supermarket. Fifty days balancing a full-time job and two kids, plus a husband I am not used to seeing all the time. Fifty days with an excuse for baking cookies, sleeping in past 6 am and watching the boys’ clothes grow too small or too short for them.

Ever felt like a tiger in a cage? So did nearly 47 million people living in Spain. Confined to our homes under the strictest lockdown measures in Europe, May 2nd meant an hour of freedom outside the confines of our walls, from watching the world from a window or balcony.

Life in Spain under lockdown

At 9:09 pm, the boys both sound asleep and the Novio splayed on the couch watching CSI (ugh, again), I slip on shoes and a light jacket.

“¿Te vas?”

Sí, voy.

My camera and I need to walk further than the nearest plaza or supermarket. I close the door silently behind me and head east. I need to see the Puente de Triana, the golden bath over the Giralda as the sun sets behind me.

Signs in Spanish regarding garbage disposal in the times

I don’t feel the same solidarity as others – I live in a house next to an empty house. There are no music concerts or comunidad-wide bingo games. We can steal glances at the neighbors, mostly elderly, who rarely venture from their homes but to clap for healthcare workers at 8pm. Even as I write this, I have only just run into someone I know today. We had a cervecita planned when the spring came.

In these fifty days, springtime in Sevilla – fleeting in even the best years – has given way to the start of a blistering summer. Within a few weeks, we won’t leave the house until after 9, when the day finally cools at the edge of night.

Hasta el 40 de mayo… you can’t leave your house. But when you do, so will everyone else.

Rainbow posters saying todo irá bien in Spain during COVID

The Novio had taken care of most grocery runs and going to work occasionally as an essential worker. I’d been content to watch Enrique run around the patio in circles while baby Millán tries to escape his playpen, the sun on my face.

At 1 pm, we have a beer in El Bar de Mi Casa. I hadn’t ventured more than 300 meters from my house, much less to my favorite cervecería, mandated closed since March 14th.

Closed until the virus passes

My route to daycare normall takes me here, to the heart of Triana’s commercial district. Past bakeries, bars, small shops. Tonight, frayed signs, hastily printed out and with vague messaging about reopening, flutter as people go by, on bikes or scooters.

The most jarring? I’m staying home. Closed until the virus passes.

Closed storefronts in Seville, Spain

I’ve felt quarantined for months, to be honest. Giving birth during the hottest months of a punishing summer. Single parenting during the week. Get up-work from home-take care of the boys-work from home-take boys to park-bedtime routine-sleep. Four days straight. Home became my new normal way before COVID-19. I lived for brief trips out for groceries or necessities. A drink on my own while the baby napped in his strolled or I could run out without either one.

Those little moments were mine. A coffee at Pedro’s on the way back from work, running into Raúl at Aldi every Monday morning. I don’t miss people so much as I miss my rituals (sorry guys).

Spanish flags with a black ribbon

I’d like to say that I walk sin rumbo. But Triana has been my home in Spain for six years – I know where she hides her secrets. And I knew San Jacinto would be packed with people.

Balconies in Seville, Spain during COVID pandemic

As the sky turns a cotton candy pink – a telltale sign of the beginning of summer and its end, much like the end of total lockdown and the beginning of de-escalation – I turn north. Zig-zagging through the narrow alleyways near Las Golondrinas, I turn on Calle Alfarería.

A couple strolls together in Seville, Spain after lockdown measures eased

This street, once home to the ceramics factories that give it its name, is now pocked with new housing developments. Most respect the stucco facades and wrought iron balconies. But the modern housing units that connect Alfarería and Castilla seems…odd. Here? I skip down it anyway.

Spit out on Calle Castilla, which snakes along the western bank of the Guadalquivir, I hear things. Bike bells. Neighbors laughing and calling out to one another. Church bells. My days have been anything but silent, but I have missed white noise.

Cesta Solidaria - take what you need but leave what you can

I’m struck at how crowded the street is – I shouldn’t be. Sevillanos live in the street, treating the bar or the tapas joint downstairs as their newspaper, their living room, their inner circle.

Plus, a famous couple lives here and the previous week’s Feria de Abril – celebrated on balconies rather than the fairgrounds – meant the street is still tangled in bunting and the remnants of tattered paper lanterns. Nos puedes quitar la Feria, pero nunca la alegría. Amid so much death and uncertainty, the spirit of the locals is as strong as ever.

Calle Castilla in the neighborhood of Triana with Torre Andalucía in the background

There is nothing so sad as a tattered farollillo, and the sight of one on the Callejón de la Inquisición pinged me in the side, the sadness for a springtime, lost. I haven’t had a primavera sevillana since 2016, and it shows.

A paper lantern on the ground

Celebrating the Feria de Abril in confinement

There’s a man loitering next to the Callejón. I ask if he’s waiting for someone to pass, and he points to his dog, a grisly German Shepherd, while flicking the butt of his cigarette to the cobblestone. He’s been able to go out with his pet since the beginning, so it’s apparent he’s not buzzing with elation like I am.

Callejón in Seville, Spain

Sunset was is at exactly 9:25, and the Paseo de la O is bathed in the yellow light of the streetlamps. He llegado.

My barrio is one of lore – inhabited by sailors and gypsies, haunted by flamenco chords. When I lived in Madrid, my neighborhoods was just that – a jumble of apartments and parking places and old man bars and city. Forever and ever, amén.

An empty alleyway in Seville, Spain during day 50 of confinement

Triana is chaotic. Wild. Familiar. Foreign.

And breathtaking.

Capilla del Carmen and the Puente de Triana of Seville, Spain

The jasmine and jacaranda have bloomed while we were locked away. Wildlife has returned to all part of Spain, and Triana’s river looked clearer than ever. I breath in the deep scent of the flowers, the damp of the river, the clean air that is not tinged with old oil in the fryer.

The jasmine blooms next to the Guadalquivir River in Seville, Spain

I take just as long to cover 150 meters as I do a kilometer, in awe of the bridge, the beauty, the barrio and the smell of a city, waking up.

We are on our way. This will be over. For all of the grief I’ve felt over the last seven weeks, I feel a small seed in my stomach – hope? Bliss? Hunger?

Puente de Triana at nightfall

I am not alone on the Guadalquivir banks, of course, but I may as well be. Gone are the fisherman on the thin stretch of gravel, the tables that spill out of restaurants on Calle Betis. There are no teenagers draped over the steps of the Faro de Triana, limbs linked as they stare downstream towards the Torre de Triana.

Sevilla skyline on a clear summer night

For once, I felt that the city belongs solely to me.

Residents of Seville, Spain can now go for walks or individual exercise after enduring 50 days of strict lockdown

Circling back, I bypass the bridge in favor of the street. The bars here are stacked one on top of another on a normal day, and the patrons, too. Eerily quiet on a Monday night, though the next morning would see businesses beginning to open their rejas halfway as employees worked to disinfect in the hopes of opening on May 11th.

But, briefly, there was just a city and its people and nothing more. Honestly, did we ever need anything more?

Triana, Seville under lockdown

It felt like the first night I ever spent in Triana – a silent Sunday evening when I found everything was closed at twilight and everyone was hunkered down in their home, waiting for Monday. The swallows circled overhead, black torpedoes against a fading sky.

I wish I had something prolific to say about being home for so long and finally rediscovering the world outside of my doorstep. But truthfully, I go to bed every night thankful that I have survived kids, dust bunnies and trying to manage my sanity, my household and my job. That we are safe and healthy. That I have not run out of books or food or patience (or, um, allergy meds).

Seville isn’t itself – but it’s for the better. When I left Seville the first time, I felt heartbroken and hopeful, all at once. My friend Juani had recently moved back from Chile and said it best: you have to leave Sevilla to truly love it.

And, maybe, you have to leave it but then return and have it forbidden. Either way, I can taste the Cruzcampo at La Grande, hear the bellowing of neighbors in the plaza.

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