But with a 50% capacity limit on shops, bars, and restaurants, a familiar sight had returned on a chilly Saturday afternoon. Reminiscent of a few months ago, when Spain was just emerging from a strict lockdown, a line of shoppers snaked outside retailer Zara. An even bigger one stretched down the street in front of the Primark store.  And even though masks are worn everywhere and all the time now, that 6-foot social distancing measure appears long gone, at a time when Madrid seems to need it most of all.

One has to wonder if this is what warring Spanish politicians had in mind with new rules that kicked in last Friday evening, as the more than 6 million residents of the Madrid region find themselves once again at the epicenter of a major European coronavirus outbreak. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Spain’s 14-day cumulative number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population stands at 319.3. Only the Czech Republic is close to that.

While cases climb, thankfully causing fewer deaths this time, Madrid’s right-wing regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has been battling Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s leftist coalition government over how to control the virus. On Sunday, a group of 55 Spanish scientific organizations representing 170,000 health professionals published a manifesto in every newspaper, demanding focus on the crisis.

“In the name of more than 47 million Spaniards, yourselves and your families included, you must change now so much political, professional and human inconsistency,” said the manifesto, which has gained over 31,000 signatures on Change.org.

Other measures Spain is enacting include limiting indoor and outdoor gatherings to six people and shutting businesses at 10 p.m., with bars and restaurants closing at 11 p.m. Ayuso has argued the measures will be devastating for an already damaged economy. To make matters worse, Madrid´s high court ruled on Thursday that it would not ratify the restrictions. More court dates are to come.

What one virologist has to say

The weary Madrid population wants to know whether any of this will be enough. According to one prominent virologist and immunologist, far more needs to be done. Margarita del Val heads up a cross-disciplinary initiative by the Spanish National Research Council, or CSIC, called Salud Global/Global Health. She has been urging that the entire region be restricted (45 municipalities had been before the latest moves), which, owing to the locations of the most heavily affected areas, led to accusations of punishing the poor.

Del Val added that Madrid needs better quarantine control and contact tracing. She also said that it lacks health care officials to carry that out. The government recently announced that police would be able to access health department data to help enforce quarantines on individuals. The national army has been drafted to help with contact tracing in parts of the country.

Del Val also zeroed in on heavily congested conditions in public transport. Complaints flooded social media about crowded buses and trains, specifically in areas that are seeing sharp rises in cases.  “Public transportation has to be safer, and making it safer means having more trains and buses … so that they are not so full. Also trying to have start times — different companies [starting their workdays] at different times — so that we don’t have the rush hour, which is highly concentrated,” she said.

Del Val also said that people living in the most highly affected areas of Madrid need to be supplied with clean masks each time they enter the metro. “Some people cannot buy surgical masks every day, and they’re using the low-quality masks, and they are not so effective for them or for others,” she said. She urged that hotels be reopened to people with symptoms, to prevent workers living in cramped conditions from spreading the virus at home. A network of hotels opened up for this purpose in the first wave of the pandemic, and those establishments are underused now that summer has ended.

‘It’s going to be a marathon’

Restaurants remain a big concern for del Val, especially as the warm weather disappears. She predicts a “huge problem” with indoor drinking and eating, even with capacity cuts to 50%. Summer outdoor dining was also problematic, she said.  “I think when people were eating and drinking outside, which was taking one measure, open air, which is good, they were forgetting a second measure … either distance or masks, or limiting contact,” she said.

Spain also had a problem with “national tourism” in the summer that brought too many people together, often families, who didn’t keep safe distances when they should have. Going forward, she said, theaters, which offer decent ventilation and where individuals wear masks and speak very little, may have an edge over restaurants.

In the end, said del Val, no one can count on any single measure. Lifestyle changes will be required. “We have to get used to wearing a mask and taking a couple of measures for a couple of years, and integrate them into our daily lives, forget about them, [and] they will turn into something that is useful to you,” she said.

“We will get over this in some years, but we don’t have to expect this is going to be a hundred-meter run. It’s going to be a marathon.”