At present the priority of the State is hospitals and their capacity but what is hard to ignore is a lurking economic nightmare.

What is clear is that keeping a brake on social movement (thus economic activity) accompanied by inflated public spending, is plunging the country into debt and bludgeoning unemployment. Yet what is also clear is that to act too hastily and open up the country could be one step forward and two steps back, which will cause much more profound damage to the economy.

In the meantime thousands of people across the country are literally going hungry because they have no income and no diminishing of the outgoings. It is precisely these people that are queueing at the food-banks doors.

It was the elderly with their meagre pensions that saved the day in the 2008 economic crisis; not the Government, who at the time said that people would just have to tighten their belts and did little. This time it appears that politicians have learnt that this will not work and governments are going to have to spend their way out of the health crisis and not, as in 2008, lock the country under a blanket of austerity.

What prompted this article was news that despite the Nerja Town Hall’s provisions for getting money to those in need (a total of 121,000 euros) there are still just over 500 families that receive food parcels. Most of this has been thanks to businesses, associations and even Semana Santa brotherhoods, together with anonymous citizens, who are providing food.

We cannot go back to the height of the 2008 financial crisis and witness people ransacking supermarket waste hoppers in order to put food on the table.

Dave Darby did a very good article, entitled S.O.S. Vecinos Almuñécar on how people in Almuñécar are collaborating to help those that need it.

(News: Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)