A Southern writer stuck in Spain experiences the comfort of people recognizing their basic connection — and looks westward down her street, toward home.
Story & Photos by Jodi Cash
As lifelong Southerners, Spain appealed to us for reasons parallel to what we always loved about Georgia: a relatively low cost of living, food, culture, art, language. Both for its similarities to home and its differences, Spain is a place we imagined ourselves staying a long time.
When I answered the phone the last time my Uncle Todd and I spoke, he said, “You must be so excited.” My heart was beating in my ears so loudly I could barely hear him; I was overwhelmed by the knowledge we might never speak again — not in this life, at least.
He called five days before my husband, Gresham, and I flew from our home in Atlanta to Barcelona, our first destination in a year of exploring and writing. As lifelong Southerners, Spain appealed to us for reasons parallel to what we always loved about Georgia: a relatively low cost of living, food, culture, art, language. Both for its similarities to home and its differences, Spain is a place we imagined ourselves staying a long time.
Try as I did to sound cheerful, I began to cry. We knew cancer would take Uncle Todd’s life, and soon. I agreed I was excited about our trip, but my heart was breaking. I fumbled for words, which were insufficient to express my love and gratitude — he was my hero and confidant, a titan in my eyes for as long as I can remember.
“I know those are tears of joy,” he said. “It’s okay; I’ve cried them too.” He reassured me that everything changes; this was merely his journey somewhere new.
Aside from a brief trek back to the States for his funeral, we’ve been in Barcelona for almost two months now. The charms of this city are uncountable, and I’ve only laid eyes on small slivers of it.
Until two weeks ago, we were finding our rhythm here, bouncing between Spanish classes, sight-seeing, and meeting new friends. In our neighborhood we’d found enchanting markets and cafes; we’d come to love seeing dogs without leashes and the sound of skateboarders rolling down our street.
Attending language school in an international tourist destination means meeting people from around the world. Represented in mine and Gresham’s classes alone: students from China, Germany, Ireland, Syria, Russia, Sweden, Iran, Canada, Ukraine, Taiwan, Singapore, Brazil, and England.
My class spent a day practicing medical Spanish, as the verbs and pronouns present a challenge for native English speakers. Me duele la garganta. Tengo tos. Tengo fiebre. Creo que tengo coronavirus. My throat hurts. I have a cough. I have a fever. I think I have the coronavirus.
With knowledge from this lesson, my instructor said, we were prepared to go to the doctor if we too caught the virus. At that moment, just four weeks ago, my classmates and I laughed. Coronavirus was referenced in class as a joke.
Although we saw people here and there wearing masks, most people had seemed relaxed. We attended a Calçotades festival, celebrating the Catalan tradition of eating grilled calçots, a kind of spring onion, dipped in romesco. We went to the movies. We rode on the metro. We shared wine in a park.
We heard some people remark that business was slow. Some acknowledged tourism wasn’t quite as busy as usual. But throughout the city, we could smell orange blossoms blooming. The trees showed signs of spring. Soon, the beaches would be too crowded to set down a towel, the locals told us. Enjoy the quiet.
Yet we knew much of the world was in a state of increasing alarm. Before we left for Spain, we stayed with my grandmother north of Atlanta. As a vigilant consumer of the news, she looked on with us at reports from Wuhan, China, about the outbreak. Pat Thomas, our dear friend, mentor, and former Knight Chair of Health and Medical Journalism at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism, reminded us to clean our tray tables and sanitize our hands when we boarded our flight.
Week by week, we received more texts from friends and family about the virus. Were we okay? Did we have toilet paper? Were people freaking out over here? Did we have room to host if they bought cheap flights to join us?
On Wednesday, March 11, my mom texted my sister Meghan and me to ask if the virus would affect our plans: Meghan and her fiance planned to meet us in Portugal the next day.
“Nope!” we replied.
That night, Meghan was thousands of feet in the air, jetting over the Atlantic Ocean, when the flight crew turned on the lights to make an announcement.
“The President has just placed a ban on travel to the United States from Europe,” the flight attendant said. He asked for calm but encouraged the passengers to wake up, turn on their computers, and make plans for immediate return home.
They obliged. Rather than continue from their layover in Amsterdam to Lisbon, they promptly boarded a flight back to the States.
I was already through security in Barcelona when I received her call, in which she tearfully told me she wasn’t coming. Gresham and I decided to board our flight to Lisbon anyway.
My sister’s decision to go home initially struck me as a mistake. From afar, America’s hysteria was still palpable, and I worried she was buying into the chaos at the cost of her vacation. In the hours they were in the air, news outposts clarified that Americans were exempt from the travel ban. I foolishly argued, to no avail, she should proceed as originally planned.
But when we touched down in Lisbon, we could sense that attitudes on the Iberian Peninsula had changed.
Our Portuguese Airbnb host greeted Gresham and me in a panic. Because I hadn’t answered his calls (which I couldn’t without Wi-Fi), he worried we had canceled our plans, as had many of his guests.
He made a gesture of his elbow in place of shaking hands, or the typical cheek kiss. And as we hastily apologized for being unreachable, he launched into a fitful diatribe: Portugal was unprepared for the crisis. He was on the front lines. No one should be traveling. This was the end of a “Golden Generation” — as a 32-year-old, his life as a Portuguese citizen had been untouched by war or comparable public health crisis. This was it.
Shaken by his warnings, we discussed what to do. Perhaps we would cut our trip short and go back to Barcelona after two nights in Lisbon. We ventured warily into the city to find food and contemplate our next move.
A friend from Atlanta texted. As a Barcelona native, he felt responsible to tell us Spain would likely shut its borders soon. And as neither citizens nor official residents, merely visitors, we could easily find ourselves on the wrong side of the line — trapped in Lisbon with few belongings and no right to return for an indefinite span of time.
We booked a flight back to Barcelona the next morning. Upon arrival, we bought groceries and two cheap guitars. We prepared for the inevitable. Hours later, cities were closing one by one.
The next night, Saturday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced an official lockdown for the entire country. The government would require all residents to stay home for 15 days, aside from necessary trips to the market, to move to and from work (for those who can’t work remotely), or to seek medical attention.
After his address ended, we heard clapping, whistling, cheering, and honking outside of our apartment. I stepped onto my balcony to join what seemed like universal celebration.
I asked my neighbors what we were clapping for.
“In solidarity with healthcare workers — nurses, doctors, and ambulance drivers. In honor of the sick, the at-risk, and those whose lives had already been lost,” they responded in a mix of Spanish and Italian. Two of my three neighbors have lived in the apartment for years, the third cannot return home to Sicily.
I can’t claim to know or understand much at all about Spain. I am an outsider, and I haven't been here long. But the applause, echoing off the buildings’ stone facades, surprised me.
Spain is not without its own tensions, and they’re historically quite significant. I write to you from the capital of Catalonia, a semi-autonomous region, which made a declaration of independence in 2017. Although the ruling party in Madrid shut down the independence movement, the desire for complete autonomy is still visible: Banners calling for independence are all over the city, where more of the signage is in Catalan than Spanish. On our street, a symbolic yellow ribbon hangs between the buildings. It’s a contentious emblem of support for Catalonia’s imprisoned and exiled pro-independence leaders. This, in a country whose bloody civil war, a telling precursor to World War II, is not even 100 years in the past.
And yet, my neighbors set that battle aside, at least for a moment, to stand on their balconies and cheer, if not in praise, then at least in support. At this moment, I can only assume: It’s not political, it’s human.
The last and only time I remember the world seeming so still, I was just 12 years old, in Stockbridge, Georgia.
Footage of planes hitting the Twin Towers played on repeat as newscasters tried to make sense of what happened. Life as we knew it was disrupted. Then, like now, we were frightened. I was too young to vote. I was too young to fight. I was too young to understand — and maybe that part is still true.
Since the lockdown began, we’ve made friends with our neighbors. They move on and off of their balconies throughout the day: smoking cigarettes, watering plants, hanging laundry, playing guitar. We greet each other with smiles, sometimes we talk.
Next door, our new friends enacted a plan to split time in different parts of their apartment. That way, each of the three people living there and the fourth accidentally staying, can have time alone when they need it and in company when they don’t.
Across the street and one floor up, our neighbor from Granada introduced himself under the pretext that we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the coming days. He is content to make the most of the lockdown, but like so many, he is worried about his family and his job security.
Speculate as we might, none of us know how long it will take to get on the other side of this, nor what will be there when we arrive. He helped clarify some rulings in place and told us the 15 home-bound days would likely be extended to 30.
“We’ll just take it day by day, I guess,” he says.
Directly across from us, a 92-year-old woman named Antonia seems to carry out her days in precisely the same way we observed before being in lockdown. She steps out in the morning and in the evening, wrapped in a periwinkle fleece robe. She tends to her garden. She looks down at the street. When there’s clapping, she joins. I waved and smiled at her yesterday. She waved and smiled back, her grin only more endearing for the missing front tooth it revealed.
Photo by jodi cash
92-year-old Antonia Roca seems to carry out her days in precisely the same way we observed before being in lockdown. She steps out in the morning and in the evening, wrapped in a periwinkle fleece robe. She tends to her garden. She looks down at the street. When there’s clapping, she joins.
I called Uncle Todd on his birthday last year (which he shares with his twin, my Aunt Gina), just after he got news that the cancer was terminal. Trying to behave normally, I asked how he was doing. He assured me he couldn’t have been better: He was surrounded by his greatest loves — his five children and his wife, Liane.
Todd Murphy was my father’s only brother. He was an artist and an adventurer, finding and sharing beauty, both in everyday things that often go unnoticed and in the far-flung corners of the world most never see. The word he used over and over again to describe his sentiment was “grateful.”
In this strange scenario, I am grateful, too. I am with my favorite person. We have all that we need.
Optimism doesn’t deny harsh realities, but I think it prompts questions instead of catastrophes. What can we do for people with nowhere to go? How can we help those who are ill? When can we applaud those putting their own lives at risk to care for the sick? How can we support employees and owners of businesses that will suffer? How can we be there for those whose loved ones will die?
Those of us in lockdown have some time to think. We will confront the fact that we are all, in immediate and existential ways, vulnerable. What conclusions will we reach?
By being inside, at least, I’m glad to mitigate the risk of spreading this virus to someone else’s grandparents or infant niece, as I’d like the same consideration for my own.
It’s hard to imagine a lockdown being imposed in a country that revolves, theoretically, around freedom. But America is also a place where we like to talk about sacrifice, and when necessary, I hope we are still willing to make them.
The day after Uncle Todd died, we went to a terrace cafe he would have loved. We did work, drank coffee, and discussed our plans to get back for the funeral. While sitting there, beneath lemon trees and palm fronds, we heard a seagull call, followed immediately by a crash of something hitting dishware. A woman screamed, “Hijo de puta!”
We looked over at the table next to us, where between two women smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, lay wings — freshly ripped off of a pigeon and dropped onto their tapas. Everyone froze. As they both stared, one started laughing. And then the other. Table by table, the whole cafe joined in.
A waitress cleaned up the gory scene hastily, shoving the wings into a garbage bag and tying it, while a waiter cleared the plates and wiped down the table. Minutes later, when the volume of chatter returned to normal, we heard another seagull call overhead. Movement and sound ceased. The waitress looked up and said, “¿Hay trauma colectivo, sí?”
This is a collective trauma, yes. No one anywhere is immune from heartbreak, disappointment, and loss. It’s an essential part of the human experience, and our response is what defines us. Ultimately, we will all end this part of our journey.
And in hardship, we can do one of two things: Come together or fall apart.
The clapping erupts nightly in Barcelona; I’m not sure where it starts or how.
Last night when Antonia stepped onto her balcony, we greeted each other again. When it ceased, she waved and said, “¡Hasta mañana!” and blew us a kiss.
Tomorrow is a day I look forward to, and I think she feels the same.
Last night when the woman across from me, Antonia, stepped onto her balcony, we greeted each other again. When [the clapping] ceased, she waved and said, “¡Hasta mañana!” and blew us a kiss.
Tomorrow is a day I look forward to, and I think she feels the same.
If I could move freely right now, I’d go to one of two places: Parc Natural de la Serra de Collserola, where we look east over the city, or the Platja de la Mar Bella, we look east at the Mediterranean Sea. From these vistas, I look outward and dream of places I still haven’t been.
For now, my outlook is confined to the westward view from my apartment. And as I look down my street toward the setting sun, I am facing home.
This virus has already set into motion forces of profound change; that’s one of few things we know. As he bravely approached the end of his own life, Uncle Todd reminded me change is the only constant. He asked me to cry tears of joy and not sorrow. Faced with the ultimate unknown, he found strength to comfort me.
Before the lockdown began, I knew none of my neighbors’ names. Now, they are our only company. They’ve taken the place, temporarily, of our coworkers, family, and friends. Now I get excited to hear the sound of a door opening. Of the chimes ringing. Of piano being practiced. The face I’m most happy to see each day is Antonia’s.
At 8 p.m. when the applause begins, we shuffle onto our balconies and wait for her to take her place across from us. The light in her front room snaps on, and we see her silhouette approach through loosely woven curtains. She smiles, waves, and joins us. Her hands sometimes get tired from clapping, but she rests for a moment, and then keeps going. She usually comments on the weather and answers questions from those of us looking at her in awe. We wonder what she must have seen in her 92 years of living that makes her so calm and kind. Before she turns in for the night, she blows each of us a kiss. Antonia, my gracious neighbor, gives us great comfort, and that’s what I wish for you too.
The clapping erupts nightly in Barcelona; I’m not sure where it starts or how. Last night, when Antonia stepped onto her balcony, we greeted each other again. When it ceased, she waved and said, “¡Hasta mañana!” and blew us a kiss.
Jodi Cash is a native Atlantan whose writing considers relationships between people and place. She is the co-founder and editor in chief of The Seed & Plate an online magazine about food, farming, and community, and author of Concrete Jungle: A Foraged Fruit Cookbook. Lately she's hard at work on her first feature length documentary, “The Green Flash,” which continues the story of a notorious St. Pete Beach, Florida pot smuggler. She otherwise lives for adventures with her husband, Gresham.