So Spain really is human...

The really great thing about Spain, you see, is just how far it’s come in a surprisingly short time.

When I was a kid, even a young adult, it was still a nasty little dictatorship run by a nasty little dictator. Francisco Franco’s regime regarded homosexuality as an abomination and (naturally) forbade it; it treated women as wards of their menfolk; it allowed only one political party (Franco’s) and had a pervasive secret police to spy on any attempt to build up an opposition, with draconian punishment for infringements: why, the last executions were carried out, by firing squad, just two months before Franco’s death.

But the country Danielle and I live in today is right up there in the forefront of progressive behaviour in Europe. Divorce and abortion are legal. It was one of the first few countries to legalise gay marriage. And, just a few months ago, it legalised euthanasia for the terminally ill too.

Madrid Gay Pride march in 2017

Even the way the country has handled Coronavirus has been impressive. They didn’t go into all the hysterical whingeing that the poor lost soul Ursula von der Leyen gave way too. So Astra Zeneca weren’t providing enough doses? Well, too bad, Spain would just keep vaccinating as many people as it could with all the doses it received.

“Don’t moan. Just do the job in hand with all the resources available to you.” Quiet, dignified and effective: it strikes me as an excellent approach to any challenge.

The results speak for themselves. Only in a few regions has compliance with Covid restrictions failed to control the pandemic. One of the most notable is Madrid, run by Isabel Ayuso, who comes straight out of the same hard-right mould which gave us – sorry, inflicted on us – both Trump and Boris Johnson. But in most areas a lid is being kept on infections. Indeed, the region where we live, the Valencian Community, is doing better than any other, with just 49 new infections per 100,000.

Even across the country as a whole, the new wave that is wreaking such devastation across most of Europe, has had led to only a relatively small increase in cases. And now, with 25% of the population – of the whole population, not just the people at high risk – having had at least one dose of one or other of the vaccines, the death rate is beginning to drop again.

Covid cases: a rise by no surge and signs of flattening off

So Spain impresses me. So much so that it’s actually quite a relief to find one area where it could perhaps do a little more, one area where it shows itself liable to the same human frailties as other countries, one area where Spain hasn’t perhaps quite caught up with the 21st century yet. 

Its Achilles heel is the internet.

Funnily enough, this story starts with the vaccination programme. Danielle and I belong to what was, for a while, called the ‘sandwich generation’ here. It was all tied up with the Astra Zeneca problems. I can’t quite remember where we’d got to, since the whole business was highly confusing: at one point, it wasn’t to be used on the old, and another not on the young, and at a third, not on anyone. But I’m damned if I can remember in which order the different limitations came.

All I know is that we reached a point where whatever vaccines were available in Spain were being used on people aged 70 or over, and then, a little later, other vaccines – or possibly the same ones, that’s how confusing it all was – on people aged 65 or under.

You can see the problem, right? Danielle and I belong to forgotten group, the people aged between 65 and 70. For the time being, we weren’t scheduled to get any kind of vaccination at all.

Fortunately, the authorities became aware of the problem – well, it was pretty much in their face, and had they even wanted to ignore it, the press made sure they couldn’t – and it was announced that people in our age group would begin to be vaccinated soon.

And, indeed, not long after, friends of ours started to be called in for their shots.

And then more friends.

And then others still.

But we had no news of when we might be called. So Danielle and I decided I’d look into it. 

Now, I think some time ago all government departments must have received a directive to set up a web page for public access to their services. Unfortunately, I see no evidence to suggest that there was follow-up memo recommending to them that the web pages should actually work.

I logged on to the local health ministry’s page. No problem at all. “You want to check whether we have the right phone number for you?” 

Calls for vaccination are issued by text message – yep, when it comes to anything based on phone, whether WhatsApp or just ordinary texts, Spain copes fine. 

“Just click here.”

So I clicked. There’s a secure online service here called Cl@ve (a clever web-savvy adaptation of a word for key code). You can have a permanent one or one that generates a one-time Pin for you. It seems I could use either of those, or I could just enter identity details.

I chose the last option, because I couldn’t remember whether I’d actually registered for Cl@ve. “Certainly,” I was told, “we’ll send you a letter by ordinary mail with a form you can fill in and send back to us to request the information you need.”

So I tried Cl@ve instead. I thought I’d better register first and filled in various pages of information until I got the message, “You stupid idiot. You’re registered already”. 

The first part of that message might have been implied rather than explicit.

Good. I tried the permanent Cl@ve service. “Enter your password here,” it requested. Ah, I thought. I have no password.

Perhaps I need the one-time Pin instead. “Download the app” the message instructed. So I did that. And – amazing! Oh wonder! It worked. I clicked on the app and, lo and behold, a Pin turned up on my phone in a text message.

Back I went to the website, ready to enter it and get the information I needed. Only to discover that, unlike the other options, there was no Submit button for the access-by-Pin service. Just nothing you could click on. No way of getting to the required screen.

So I gave up. I decided to phone my health centre instead, dreading what that would mean. Usually, you can’t get through for at least 20 calls.

And – another wonder! They answered on my first call, after three rings. 

“Yes, sir,” they said, “and what is your social security identifier?”

“You are David Leonard?” 

That’s what they call me. You can’t have a second forename in Spain, but you are supposed to have two surnames, the second one of which you tend to ignore, though not always – that’s how exciting it is. For instance, the Boris Johnson hard-right look-alike woman in Madrid is actually Isabel Díaz Ayuso but, Díaz being terribly common, she prefers to use her second surname.

David Leonard Beeson is clearly Mr Leonard, with a second surname of Beeson.

“Yes,” I said, “that’s me.”

“Nothing to worry about,” she assured me, courtesy and good service personified, “you’ll be called for a vaccination next week.”

She was right. I had the text message today. My vaccination is on Wednesday.

Just goes to show. In Spain, don’t rely on the internet. Speak to a living person instead (if you can get through to them).

The opposite of England, where the Web (generally) works, and many services no longer even offer a phone number to call instead…