Spain begins a 10-day period of official mourning today in memory of those who have died from Covid-19.
The country lost 26,834 people to the virus with just over 235,000 confirmed cases.
Tipperary-native, Breda McGrath is living in the capital, Madrid.
She says the reopening of services there is quite slow:
“Unlike at home in Ireland, we’re entering different phases. Each let’s say province, or county of Spain is entering phases at different times, depending on how we’re doing in relation to the numbers of people being affected.
“Of course, Madrid being the capital, it has been the worst affected region, so we’re always going to go into each phase later than the other regions.”
The country is still among the top 5 with the most cases of the coronavirus in the world.
Breda says there is a lot of anger that action wasn’t taken quickly enough by the government there:
“I brought my 2-year-old to get a check-up on Friday with the paediatric nurse. They actually lost one of their colleagues to coronavirus.
“She was very angry because the last appointment that I had was the beginning of March and at that point it wasn’t even a genuine worry for people working in the healthcare sector.
“They were being told it’s just another flu, don’t worry. It was the 6th or 7th of March when she put on her first mask.
“11 days later, the whole city was in lockdown.”
You can listen back to Breda’s full interview on Tipp Today here.
