Our new home country, Spain, has reacted more sensibly than many to the Covid-19 pandemic. Broadly speaking. And for now.
We do have some fringe elements who are reacting to new restrictions brought in to cope with the latest outbreak of the disease, with cries of ‘Freedom! Freedom!’ A curious cry, as though the right to infect others with an unpleasant and potentially lethal disease, is a freedom for which we ought to be fighting.
That’s the same in other countries, but in some of them, such as England or parts of the US, those cries are more widespread and a lot louder.
Overall, most Spaniards are coping fine with the renewed requirements to wear masks in more places than just a few weeks ago. Equally, they don’t seem too upset about the need to show documentary evidence of being vaccinated, before they can get into most enclosed public places. It’s possible that they’ve understood that sacrifices of small freedoms of little benefit are well worth it for the far greater freedom of removing the threat of Covid.
In our region of Spain, the local government has made it obligatory to show a vaccine passport on entry to most enclosed public places, including cafes and restaurants. Most of us have been vaccinated, a growing number three times. I have to report, and I hope the anti-vaxxers won’t hold it against me, that the process wasn’t particularly unpleasant, nor has it left me, as far as I can tell, controlled by Bill Gates, George Soros or Darth Vader.
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| Covid passport for the Valencian region A major assault on human rights? Or supporting the right to safety? |
That’s a position that I strongly support. At least in principle. It turns out that, in practice, I have slightly more trouble with it.
You may have picked up that I recently published my second novel. Well, not a novel really. It’s extracts I’ve stolen from the diaries kept by the cat and the two toy poodles who tolerate our presence in their home in return for sufficient food and large quantities of attention. I leave you to decide to what extent that makes it a work of fiction or not.
I’ve sent a few copies out to friends and relatives, including one to a friend in the US. Never again. The postage cost two and a half times the price of the book.
Since I was spending that much on it, I decided to get the delivery tracked. That meant that the friendly person in the post office printed out a receipt for me, on a sheet of A4 paper, which I carefully stored away in the shoulder bag where I keep such precious documents.
Meanwhile, since I still haven’t worked out how to download my vaccine passport and store it on my phone, I also printed that out. On a piece of A4 paper, which I carefully stored away in the same shoulder bag for documents that precious.
Well, you can see where this is going, can’t you? When asked in the restaurant for my vaccine passport, what I pulled out, with a bit of a flourish of pride in having ensured I had it on me, wasn’t the vaccine passport but the post office receipt.
“I can’t find the QR code,” the friendly waitress told me.
“There’s a bar code,” I pointed out. Patiently I thought.
She scanned the other people’s passports, which actually had QR codes. And then turned back to me. In the short delay, I was able to take stock of what I’d actually shown her. It had very clearly been issued by the post office.
I looked through my shoulder bag again and found the vaccine passport. I passed it over to the waitress, and apologised.
“Sorry,” I said, “what I gave you before was a post office receipt.”
She smiled. The Spaniards tend to be tolerant of minor errors. They also often have a pleasant sense of humour, and she certainly did.
“If you like,” she assured me earnestly, “I can check when I get home, and let you know where your package has got to.”
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