英国卫报:西班牙小镇为何成疫情重灾区(1)

When we first spoke¹, in mid-April, Maria Jose Duenas began weeping within seconds.

4月中旬，当我们第一次交谈时，玛丽亚·何塞·杜恩纳斯没过几秒钟就开始哭泣。

Her parents’ home town, Santo Domingo de La Calzada, had the worst death rate from coronavirus in Spain, she told me on the phone.

她在电话中告诉我，她父母的家乡圣多明戈-德拉卡尔萨达是西班牙冠状病毒死亡率最高的地方。

“I’m so scared,” she said. Duenas told stories of police clambering through windows to rescue the dying, who were too weak to open their doors.

她说，“我很害怕。”杜埃纳斯讲述了警察爬进窗户去援救那些将死之人的故事，因为他们太虚弱了，无法自己开门。

Regional politicians, meanwhile, refused to give town-by-town figures for the dead, stoking anxiety and encouraging conspiracy² theories.

与此同时，地方政客拒绝公布每个城镇的死亡人数，这加剧了人们的焦虑，并助长了阴谋论。

Santo Domingo’s locked-down residents, she claimed, were being deliberately³ kept in the dark as the virus silently stalked the town.

她声称，圣多明各被封锁的居民被故意蒙在鼓里，因为病毒在小镇上悄然潜行。

Due?as does not live in Santo Domingo, a town of 6,300 people set among patchwork⁴ fields of cereal crops in the northern Spanish region of La Rioja.

杜埃纳斯并不居住在圣多明戈，那是一个拥有6300人口的小镇，位于西班牙北部拉里奥哈地区的错落的谷物田里。

She was born there, but now lives 28 miles away in Logrono, the capital of this wealthy region, best known for the rich red wines that bear its name.

她出生在那里，但现在住在28英里外的洛格罗尼奥市。洛格罗尼奥市是这个富裕地区的首府，以盛产以其名字命名的红酒而闻名。

Her angry, sometimes wildly conspiratorial⁵ outbursts on local Facebook groups –

她在当地的脸书群组上大发雷霆，有时甚至带有强烈的阴谋论色彩——

some of which have been deleted against her will – mean not all her old neighbours will welcome her back.

其中一些已被删除，这违反了她的意愿——意味着不是所有的老邻居都欢迎她回来。

If Covid-19 increases tensions among neighbours in big cities,

如果说新冠病毒会加剧大城市邻居之间的紧张局势，

it can produce poisonous outbreaks of mistrust in small, more insular⁶ places like Santo Domingo.

那它会在圣多明戈这样与世隔绝的的小地方造成有害的不信任的爆发。

By the time Duenas and I spoke again, two weeks later, the abbot from the town’s small cathedral had lodged⁷ a complaint against her for defamation⁸.

两周后，当我和杜埃纳斯再次交谈时，镇上小教堂的修道院长已经以诽谤为由对她提起了诉讼。

(She had claimed the church was covering up the role it had played in spreading the virus.)

(她曾声称教会在掩盖它在传播病毒中扮演的角色。)

Even members of her own family were livid at the way she had aired Santo Domingo’s sorry status as one of Spain’s worst Covid-19 disaster zones.

她宣扬圣多明戈处境糟糕，是西班牙最严重的新冠肺炎灾区之一，甚至连她自己的家人都对她感到愤怒。

Duenas suggested I call Jorge Sanchez, a former town councillor and a well-known local figure, to get a sense of the scale of the disaster.

杜埃纳斯建议我打电话给豪尔赫·桑切斯，让他了解一下灾难的严重程度。桑切斯曾是镇议员，也是当地的知名人物。

On 9 March, he had met with a couple of friends, Enrique Ortega and Aldo Muga, at Muga’s bar. They had chatted about Ortega’s upcoming 51st birthday.

3月9日，他在蒙加的酒吧会见了一些朋友，恩里克·奥尔特加和奥尔多·蒙加。他们聊到了奥尔特加即将到来的51岁生日。

“Now I am the only one left alive,” Sanchez told me. All three caught the disease, and the other two men both died at a hospital in Logrono on 21 March.

“现在我是唯一还活着的人，”桑切斯告诉我。他们三人都感染了该病，3月21日，另外两人在洛格罗诺的一家医院去世。

1 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

2 conspiracy   

n.阴谋，密谋，共谋

参考例句：

• The men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder.这些人被裁决犯有阴谋杀人罪。
• He claimed that it was all a conspiracy against him.他声称这一切都是一场针对他的阴谋。

3 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

4 patchwork   

n.混杂物；拼缝物

参考例句：

• That proposal is nothing else other than a patchwork.那个建议只是一个大杂烩而已。
• She patched new cloth to the old coat,so It'seemed mere patchwork. 她把新布初到那件旧上衣上，所以那件衣服看上去就象拼凑起来的东西。

5 conspiratorial   

adj.阴谋的，阴谋者的

参考例句：

• She handed the note to me with a conspiratorial air. 她鬼鬼祟祟地把字条交给了我。 来自辞典例句
• It was enough to win a gap-toothed, conspiratorial grin. 这赢得对方咧嘴一笑。 来自互联网

6 insular   

adj.岛屿的，心胸狭窄的

参考例句：

• A continental climate is different from an insular one.大陆性气候不同于岛屿气候。
• Having lived in one place all his life,his views are insular.他一辈子住在一个地方，所以思想狭隘。

7 lodged   

v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属

参考例句：

• The certificate will have to be lodged at the registry. 证书必须存放在登记处。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Our neighbours lodged a complaint against us with the police. 我们的邻居向警方控告我们。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 defamation   

n.诽谤；中伤

参考例句：

• Character defamation can be either oral or written.人格诽谤既可以是口头的也可以是书面的。
• The company sued for defamation.这个公司因受到诽谤而提起诉讼。