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The community chaired by Javier Lambán (Ejea de los Caballeros, Zaragoza, 62 years old) has been in the eye of the hurricane for almost two months. It was the first that, just after the country had come out of the state of alarm, had to push back to phase 2 three regions that border Catalonia due to a series of uncontrolled outbreaks among seasonal fruit. Three weeks later he made the same decision with the capital, Zaragoza, where there is community transmission, and Huesca. With an incidence of coronavirus that is five times the Spanish average, Fernando Simón has been pronouncing the words "Aragon" and "concern" together. Until this Thursday, when he spoke of "stabilization." Lambán clings to that concept, hurt by how some media have reported a worse situation, he says, than the real one. Aragon has 33 regions, and "in 30 of them the situation is absolutely normal." “It continues to be a safe and reliable tourist destination,” he adds, and lets it be known that two vacation ministers have just been there: Salvador Illa and Arancha González Laya. The region has infections in 55 homes for the elderly, a problem that is not alien to it. His father lives in one of them and has been talking to him for days by videoconference. "It is quite painful."
Question. Aragon is the European region with the most infections. Why?
Reply. I don't know if we are the region with the most cases, but I would dare to say that there are few regions that have made so much diagnostic effort, so many PCRs per inhabitant, and that have so many trackers looking for possible infections. That gives high figures, worrying, but most are asymptomatic, between 60% and 70%. That forces us to take many measures and we have taken them from the first moment.
P. What has caused this situation, especially in Zaragoza?
R. Zaragoza brings together more than half the population. I usually say it's a perfect storm. Nightlife, youth, has been the source of many infections. On the other hand, and this is something unusual in other large capitals, many thousands of seasonal workers reside here who work in the collection of the fruit, which has been revealed as an absolutely enormous source of contagion. The fault is not of the temps, it is of other circumstances that we will have to correct. These two converge and it occurs in a large city where the possibility of expansion is greater and the possibility of controlling it is less. We have identified the causes and the system is reacting effectively. We are in the plateau phase. In previous weeks we had between 600 and 700 cases a day and now between 300 and 500. We see the future with a certain margin of hope.
"The virus is not going to give up and problems are going to be common"
P. Every year there is a fruit campaign in summer. Could the problem not be foreseen?
R. In the videoconferences with President Sánchez, I think I remember that on March 29, I warned of this problem. To pick the fruit, many people are needed, many are immigrants, and that could cause problems both in transport and in habitability. We started taking measurements from the first moment and discovered the difficulty of taking them. In Aragon the sweet fruit sector is excessively atomized. To employ 15,000 people there are between 3,000 and 3,500 employers. Control over this activity is infinitely more complex than in autonomous communities where employers are large cooperatives or companies. This has made it difficult for the measures to be successful. We have made responsible statements forcing employers to properly hire people. But we have been unable to control the situation as it should have been. Many are responsible, but in other cases not. We are already designing measures so that in the next campaign this will not be repeated.
The interview, at the Government headquarters, takes place a couple of hours before Minister Salvador Illa announces that he has agreed with the communities a series of control measures, such as the closure of nightlife and the prohibition of smoking in open spaces . For Lambán, a coordinated response is crucial. “The communities need legal instruments that we do not have or are not sufficiently clear. I am not saying that we have to have the ability to decree a state of alarm, it would be stupid on my part, or to confine large cities, but there are issues that we must all agree on because problems are going to be common. The virus will not give up. We have to live with him and we have to agree on how to tackle the problem of nightlife or seasonal workers ”.
Q. Do you think there has been excessive heterogeneity in the measures of the communities?
A. I don't think so. Sometimes there has been more heterogeneity in the decision of the judges than in the measures. We were denounced by medical unions for making professionals work without masks at first. We have been convicted. When we didn't do it, it's because we couldn't do it. In Castilla y León, the same complaint was rejected by the judges.
Q. What legal instruments have you lacked?
R. We are concerned about being more effective in controlling nightlife. We decided that in the whole community the activity is interrupted at one in the morning and we regulate it in an order. The sector appealed it and the judge responded to the request, so we have not been able to apply it. In other communities yes. It is an example that this should be resolved by national directives or decrees. How to have the ability to make partial confinements from a position of clear legal security and not be pending of the judges.
"I see such dispersion in the data, that I am worried that we will solve it"
Q. Why hasn't Zaragoza been confined?
R. The confinement of Zaragoza would be a measure that would ultimately be resorted to because doing so would practically stop the economic engine of the autonomous community. We have trusted that the measures in the end would redirect the situation and make it manageable. Unfortunately, situations in which there is a temptation to confine, in Aragon and throughout Spain, are going to occur many. That possibility, like returning to a state of alarm, has to disappear from our heads because from the economic point of view it definitely ruins this country.
Q. What other steps have you taken?
R. In Zaragoza we are learning about mistakes without resorting to extreme measures that would be lethal. We have increased the diagnostic capacity. We can do 5,000 PCRs a day. We are doing between 3,000 and 4,000. We have 268 trackers, one for every 5,000 residents. We have just created a new call center staffed by retired healthcare personnel. We do it not in response to the present moment, but in anticipation of what may come next. Not for a regrowth, but to live practically in a continuous outbreak situation. This is how I see it. The Army has set up a tent in the Clinical Hospital to relieve emergencies. During the first wave, we set up a 400-bed field hospital that we never used and we haven't dismantled. We have enabled spaces to facilitate the isolation of people who, due to their living conditions, cannot do so and we have home control teams: social workers and volunteers who go to the houses to verify in a peaceful and friendly way that whoever has to be isolated is so . We do not do it thinking about what happens now but about what is coming, which is going to be difficult. And while continuing to address the rest of the Government's issues, especially the economic recovery. We work on the design of projects to attract economic recovery funds from the European Union. One cannot ignore the other. If not, we will all be healthy but absolutely broke.
Q. You often insist that Aragón is very transparent with the data, perhaps suggesting that others are not?
R. I am not saying at all that no one operates in bad faith. I see such dispersion, such heterogeneity in the data that I am very concerned that we solve this problem, but not by making comparisons, but because it is essential to know what is happening. Data of similar quality are needed, responding to identical questionnaires. We all have to count how many PCRs we do, how many trackers we have, asymptomatic cases ... In the same terms.
Q. Those identical questionnaires have been requested by the Government since March 15. Why do you think we still don't have good data from the communities?
A. I am unable to give an answer, but it is obvious that there is no clear agreement between the data. We continue to discuss the number of deaths that have occurred throughout the pandemic. Without presuming the bad faith of anyone, I believe that something we will not be doing well, some kind of lack of coordination will exist so that this key issue does not work with enough efficiency.
P. What are we doing wrong in Spain to be much worse than our European neighbors?
A. I don't know but some reason will exist. We have seen that both at the beginning of the pandemic and now, worrying data are produced throughout the northwest: Navarra, the Basque Country, Aragon, Catalonia. Now Madrid is incorporated. A well-financed and effective healthcare system like that of the Basque Country has problems that other communities with less well-endowed systems do not have. Why? I do not know. We should ask ourselves. I am reluctant to think that in Spain everything is attributable to poor political management and less to the poor quality of Spanish public health.
Q. Considering the excess of deaths in Spain, much higher than in other countries, do you think that the Government mismanaged the first wave?
R. In this very serious crisis in which we are plunged, I believe that everyone, the French, the Germans, all of us, have done what we have known, what we have been able to do and when we have been able to do it. I am incapable of making any reproach to the Government of Spain. We had horrendous problems with the protection equipment of the health personnel and to equip the ICUs with respirators. But the problem is that other countries also had this problem, with centralized health systems. The problems have been similar and the timing of the adoption of measures has been similar in all cases. One of the problems with buying respirators in China was that we were competing with half the world. Experts will be able to find an answer in some time. I'm not able. The opposition's easy answer is to hold the government's negligence accountable. I don't think the government was negligent. Did you do wonderfully well? It was impossible to do wonderfully well. He did what he could and knew. It is what we all continue to do.
"Telling schools that there will be no outbreaks is deceiving them"
Q. After learning from the first wave, how is it possible to have so many cases in residences again?
R. Aragon has a number of institutionalized people much higher than the Spanish average. This resulted in the vast majority of deaths occurring in residences. We have learned. We saw that an origin was the transfer between the residence and the hospital. They brought it from hospitals, so we started a system of covid centers to prevent the elderly from returning to their residences immediately. Aragon has 288 residences. There are infections in 55, but 80% of the cases are concentrated in seven. The situation is reasonably controlled.
Q. How does the virus enter residences now?
R. I do not want to blame the workers, which has been one of the most exemplary groups in recent months, but when there is a certain community transmission in an area, especially in the city of Zaragoza, it is almost inevitable that people enter the residence hall from a worker who does not know that he has the virus with him. It has been proven that in many cases this has been the origin, that is why we have asked that the measures of access to workers be extreme.
Q. How are the hospitals?
A. It has been published that we are in a state of collapse. It's not real. Yesterday [for this Thursday] we had 549 admissions between normal beds and ICU. Six less than three days ago. Occupation begins to decline. At the hard time we had 1,200 covid income, and at that time the system did not collapse either.
P. You govern with three more parties. Has that been a problem in managing the pandemic?
A. Not at all. I proudly say that the pandemic has not only failed to generate tensions but has strengthened cohesion.
P. In the central government, also coalition, there have been dissensions, but about the crisis of the King Emeritus. How do you rate them?
R. We all know what is the vision that certain parties have of the institution of the Crown. I think that sometimes you would have to be more careful with how you fulfill the commitment that one acquires when taking office in this country, which is committed to doing so with loyalty to the King. But I am not going to go into those questions. I believe that the president and the socialist part of that Government are acting in an absolutely impeccable manner: respecting the Constitution and a fundamental element of that Constitution, which is the form of headship of the State that we have in Spain, a monarchy.
Q. We don't know where the King Emeritus is. Do you think we should know?
R. The emeritus king is a Spanish citizen who is not in a situation of being investigated. I think it is a decision of the Royal House itself. I have been adhering to something fundamental about these matters for a long time: King Felipe VI is a responsible man, who exercises his function with admirable dignity and efficiency, and I believe that these types of questions should be left to him to handle them as he sees fit .
P. There is a revolt of the municipalities, also the socialists, for the use of the remnants. Who has the reason?
R. First I want to locate the origin of this problem, which is a decision of the previous Government, Minister Montoro, who decided to block the use of the remnants by the municipalities. I didn't understand that, I didn't share it at all. The agreement between the FEMP and the Government partly improves this problem, but obviously not completely. This explains the rather general dissatisfaction in the local Spanish world, including socialist mayors. And he also explains that the president himself was willing to continue talking and negotiating to find a solution. The optimal solution would be to repeal Montoro's law and release the use of the remnants by municipalities. I have been mayor and I am sure that mayors would make splendid use of those almost 27,000 million euros of surplus. One euro in the hands of a mayor yields as much social and economic benefit as five euros in the hands of any other administration.
Q. As the virus situation is, is it safe to open schools in a few weeks?
R. Schools must necessarily be opened. Parents and common sense demand it. We are all aware that openness is not going to be easy, it is going to be problematic. To tell the schools that there will be no outbreaks is to mislead them. There are going to be outbreaks, we are going to face complicated situations. What you have to do is have absolutely detailed and rigorous health protocols to know what to do at all times. You have to try to make the opening of the course as close as possible to normality, knowing that it will not be normal under any circumstances. Make no mistake, it is a situation that we will have to live with until the end of the course.
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