There could almost be a daily tally of the mistakes made by Pedro Sánchez's Spanish government in managing the coronavirus crisis, but given the delicate public health situation in Spain and the impending economic crash that is upon us - in Catalonia many of the estimates already calculate a final barbarous figure of one million workers laid off (under ERTO plans) by the pandemic - as well as the intention of not wanting to exhaust readers, this editorial will focus only on those governmental mistakes which due to their significance cannot be avoided.
This Thursday we learned that a batch of rapid coronavirus tests that the Spanish government had bought in China was defective. Had the Chinese, the government or entrepreneurs fooled the Spanish health authorities? One had to assume that this was the case, especially after the clear words of Pedro Sánchez, pronounced last Saturday: "[The tests] are reliable and approved." So what really happened? In fact, the Chinese embassy in Spain cleared it up within a few hours, and if you will allow me, this can only be labeled as a botch job by the Spanish government. Someone, we'll know who it is, since it's always known, had decided to ignore the list that the Chinese authorities has provided of approved companies and chose, off their own bat, one that lacked any seal of guarantee and which manufactured without meeting the EC quality standards.
Only a government with a level of criticism as muted as the current one - the crisis in the media conglomerates with the collapse of their advertising income due to coronavirus will lower the bar even further - is able to continue to marching onwards over its mistakes as if it has cotton wool in its ears or just pinning the blame on the right or the pro-independence parties. Will anyone from Madrid ever dare say the obvious: centralization has been a grave error which has cost precious days in fighting the pandemic?