Since last Monday, we – in the provinces of Granada and Malaga – find ourselves in Phase 1 of the deconfinement. I am not going to lie, but it was a transition we had been waiting impatiently. We studied the new rules last weekend and soon we realized that some of the regulations were either too complicated or too vague. The most important one: what about excursions? Where we allowed to make them or not? That was the question.

We didn’t want to run the risk of being fined, so last Monday we went to our local police station. Unfortunately, Lars and I couldn’t agree on what they answered to our question… Luckily, Lars has a sister who is fluent in Spanish and she was willing to call them. And she assured us that we were not allowed to make any excursions at all. On the other hand, the police had also told her that they were not very sure since the rules kept changing on a daily basis.

To be honest, I feel sympathy for the police… Because the regulations do change all the time. An example. Two days before, the Ayuntamiento of Iznalloz declared on their Facebook page that during Phase 1, we still had to respect the timeslots during our daily walk. One day later, they said the opposite. One rule that everybody in Spain has to follow since last Thursday though is the obligatory wearing of the mouth mask. Not too happy about this, frankly. Especially now with the hot weather, I feel like I am suffocating all the time. But, we are only supposed to wear it when social distancing cannot be guaranteed.

Back to our question about excursions. We called the Ayuntamiento and a nice lady gave us an affirmative answer. An even nicer lady of the Danish consulate in Malaga did the same. And finally, the official tourist information office of the province of Granada gave us the green light. We could go anywhere we wanted, as long as we stayed in the province. And followed the rules of hygiene and social distancing.

WE. WERE. OFF…

During that Monday, I realized two things:

• It was great to be on the road again!
• I had missed the simple pleasures of life even more.

A simple pleasure like going to a bar. Having drinks. Eating tapas.

By the way, the tapa that is shaped like ice cream is Russian salad, the other one is a tortilla with ham. And yes, that is a brandy after my meal.

And… you don’t need to wear that mask as long as you are at your table. If you need to use the restroom, you have to. And you need to use a hand sanitizer before entering and leaving. I can totally live with that.

Another day, another excursion, another tapa… Pork with a spicy tomato sauce. Yum!

Our freedom is, of course, limited. But luckily the province of Granada is big enough to keep us busy for some months. And I guess I will have to wait longer before Lars and I can do some grocery shopping together. It is like it is…

At least, we can make excursions again.

Next week, you can look forward to our first post about… Poland! And at least one post about one of the recent excursions we made here in Spain.

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