Minnesota native Casey Maher has been living under lockdown in Madrid since Saturday.
If she leaves her apartment to go anywhere other than the supermarket, pharmacy or hospital, she could be fined, or even arrested.
“It’s silent outside,” she said in a video interview with the Pioneer Press on Thursday. “The city is just bare. It’s like a ghost town, apocalypse Zombieland here. It’s odd. It’s almost eerie. It’s like some zombie attack happened, and there only are a few people left on the planet.”
Last weekend, the Spanish government declared a state of emergency and imposed a strict quarantine on all citizens to stop the spread of COVID-19. Schools and universities are closed. So are stores, movie theaters, bars and restaurants.
Maher has this advice for Minnesotans: “Oh my God, please take this seriously. I think every store, every restaurant, every shop needs to just close right now. I know it’s going to be an economic hit, and that’s going to worry people, but this is a huge deal. Distancing yourself as much as possible protects the people you love. The longer this is prolonged, the longer we’re going to have to stay in quarantine, so take it seriously, and quit gathering.”
As of Thursday, the number of people who had tested positive to COVID-19 in Spain was 17,140 with 767 deaths — about 500 of them in Madrid alone, officials said.
Maher, who grew up in Marine on St. Croix and graduated from Stillwater Area High School, teaches English, acting and singing in Spain’s capital city. She has lived there for 2 ½ years.
Since the lockdown, she has switched to teaching online, she said.
She lives in Malasaña, about a 20-minute walk from the center of the city and a 10-minute walk from Gran Vía. On Wednesday, she ventured out to Carrefour supermarket, about a 15-minute walk from her apartment. “I bought strawberries, bananas, and a Mahou beer for my roommate,” she said.
She said she is trying to stay positive.
“Initially, there were some emotional ups and downs,” she said. “We don’t know how long it’s going to last. I don’t want to get sick. I’m going to miss my boyfriend, I’m going to miss my friends. And now, it’s just, like, this is what we have, and we have to learn how to work with it.”
In addition to teaching, she does online workout classes; FaceTimes her parents, Gayle Knutson and Jim Maher, and gets caught up on “Downton Abbey,” she said.
One unexpected benefit of the lockdown is that she has gotten to know her neighbors better, including a woman and her 2-year-old son who live across the courtyard and the elderly Spanish couple who live next door, she said.
“I have mini window conversations with the couple,” she said. “It’s really sweet. They’ve offered us help in any way, should we need it, and I’ve offered to go and buy their groceries if they ever feel too nervous to go outside — seeing as they’re more at risk.”
There also have been moments of magic, she said, that “restore my faith in humanity on a daily basis.”
“Every single night at 8 p.m., we all come out on our balconies, and we applaud and cheer for the health-care workers,” she said. “It’s emotional every single time. I always get choked up. There’s such a feeling of unity in all this, and it’s really beautiful to see. It makes me feel better. It makes me feel that we’re going to get through this.”
