Only a country that is absolutely obsessed with imposing a false narrative of unity, no matter the cost, can be so uncritical of the failure, measured in human lives, of centralising powers to address the coronavirus pandemic crisis. There is not a day when the fateful decision to take away the autonomous communities’ powers in healthcare and public order matters does not end up causing serious damage to the citizens. This decision which aimed at avoiding comparisons among the different autonomous communities’ efficiency, and between them and the central government, entailed an enormous delay in the control of the virus. It has also led to an alarming delay in purchases of basic suplies such as masks or test kits to detect the number of infected.
The latest embarrassment happened this Friday when the Spanish health ministry had to withdraw hundreds of thousands of masks that it had distributed to the autonomous communities and were intended for healthcare professionals. Several million were put into circulation until the Parc Taulí hospital in Sabadell detected that they were unreliable as the penetration level of the filtering material, which must be under 6% reached 30% with some of these masks. In other words: a real botched job. "We've been using them for a week," said an irritated Andalusian nurse on Friday.
And what about the new Coronavirus death toll, increased after Catalonia successfully introduced a new counting system and included those who died outside hospital centres? Madrid has joined the much more transparent system, and its death toll has increased from 7,000 to almost 13,000. Does anyone think that with this shameful management evaluation it will be easy to ask the European Union for aid or to propose, as Pedro Sánchez does, the mutualisation of the debt? Who is going to bet on a government that knows neither how to buy masks abroad nor how to track the number of dead by Coronavirus?
The Spanish government is obsessed with turning the pandemic into a huge publicity campaign for unity, under the slogan "we stop this virus together", and turning public appearances at Moncloa into a military act, above anything else. It would be better for some to think less about politics and pay more attention to the professionals, in order to end, if possible, the current chaos. Perhaps it is time to stop being foolish. Otherwise, we won’t get out of this hole for a while.