Rosa Otero prepares her dinner in solitude for another evening meal.
This pandemic Christmas Eve takes what should be a precious scarce moment to spend time with her family yet another daily episode of her life as a widow living alone.
Otero, 83, normally travels across Spain from her small, neat Barcelona apartment to northwest Galicia to spend the winter holidays with her family.
But travel restrictions and health authorities insistence that infections are on the rise have convinced Otero’s family to cancel their vacation plans for this year.
“I don’t feel like celebrating,” said Otero, sitting down to eat a plate of salmon and potatoes. “I don’t like Christmas because it brings me bad memories. My husband died in January seven years ago. Since then I have felt very alone. ”
Otero is one of countless elderly people, mostly poor and tucked indoors, who feel even more isolated than usual on the night before Christmas.
Otero misses the company of the publicly run senior center in her neighborhood, which she and many others often visit to meet up with friends, socialize, or play a game of cards. That island has been cut off from society as a result of the pandemic.
About the only link that keeps their vulnerable lives connected to the rest of the world is the local primary care clinic. Medical staff, who have borne the heavy burden of the fight against the virus in Spain and elsewhere, have made every effort to conduct home visits for elderly people who do not have the resources to fully care for themselves.
The lifelong home of 80-year-old Francisca Cano has become a storage place for miscellaneous items. Cano knits, embroiders, makes paper flowers and builds collages from pieces of wood, plastic and paper she finds on the street.
Due to the pandemic, she can only speak to her two sisters by phone.
“We missed each other this Christmas break,” said Cano. “As I got older, I went back to my childhood, crafting like a girl. That’s my way of keeping loneliness at bay. ”
Then there are those whose social connections were already erased before COVID-19 made socializing a threat.
José Ribes, 84, has been used to being alone since his wife left him. He kept the Spanish Christmas Eve tradition of eating shrimp alive. He kicked and ate them in the bed where he eats all of his meals and smokes cigarettes that give his house a permanent smell of stale tobacco.
“My life is like my mouth,” Ribes said. “I have none of my upper teeth, while all the lower teeth are still there. I’ve always been like that, had everything or nothing. ”
Álvaro Puig also barely noticed the impact of the virus that kept many families from gathering.
Puig, 81, lives in the old butcher shop specializing in horse meat that he ran after inheriting it from his parents. Long closed for business, the counter where he visited customers, the scale where he weighed meat, the cash register where he called bills, are all intact. The walk-in refrigerator, in disuse, has become a miniature living room for its existence as a secluded bachelor. There he watches television with his rabbit, which he rescued from the street.
‘The loneliness touches me these days. I often feel depressed, ”said Puig. ‘These holidays don’t make me happy, they make me sad. I hate them. Most of the family has died. I’m one of the last ones left. I will spend Christmas alone at home because I have no one to spend with. “
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AP writer Joseph Wilson contributed to this report.
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