英国卫报:西班牙小镇为何成疫情重灾区(3)（在线收听）

It is easy for city folk to dream of escaping to the countryside,

城市居民想逃到乡下是容易的事情，

as they seek safe hideaways from close physical contact or the claustrophobia of a locked-down city apartment.

因为他们想寻找安全的藏身之处，远离亲密的身体接触或幽闭的城市公寓。

Viewed through this lens, rural towns seem like the bucolic, Zoom-connected work centres of the future.

乡村城镇似乎是未来充满田园风情、通过zoom软件相连的工作中心。

I understand how tempting it is to slip into such reveries. During Spain’s coronavirus lockdown,

我理解陷入这样的遐想中有多诱惑。在西班牙的新冠禁闭期，

I have been living near Candeleda, a town in the province of Avila, 100 miles west of Madrid and similar in size to Santo Domingo.

我一直生活在阿维拉省的一个小镇坎德莱达，它位于马德里以西100英里，面积与圣多明戈相仿。

I have enjoyed mountain views, flowering meadows and pure, fresh air.

我享受着山景、开花的草地和清新的空气。

But I am also now familiar with the eerie experience of isolation within a normally tight-knit community. City friends are envious.

但是我也熟悉在一个通常关系紧密的社区中孤独的可怕经历。城市的朋友很嫉妒。

In some ways they are right to be, but in others they are decidedly wrong.

在某些方面，他们是对的，但是在其他方面他们肯定错了。

Nobody is safe from a global pandemic. Santo Domingo is proof of that.

在全球疫情爆发中，没人是安全的。圣多明戈就是证明。

Few countries have suffered as badly as Spain from Covid-19.

很少有国家像西班牙那样遭受新冠肺炎的严重影响。

In per-capita terms, it is believed to have the world’s highest rate of deaths, according to a study of excess deaths from all causes by the Financial Times – though Britain may soon overtake it.

英国《金融时报》一项关于各种原因导致的超额死亡的研究显示，按人均计算，西班牙是世界上死亡率最高的国家，不过英国可能很快就会超过中国。

Some critics of Spain’s leftwing coalition government have blamed the severity of the outbreak,

一些西班牙左翼联合政府的批评者已经将西班牙的严重疫情

in part, on the failure to cancel celebrations for International Women’s Day on Sunday 8 March.

部分归咎于关于未能取消3月8日(周日)的国际妇女节庆祝活动。

Across Spain, at the end of a week that had seen the first coronavirus deaths reported in Madrid,

在一周要结束时，西班牙各地数百万人走上了街头。

the Basque country and Valencia, several million people took to the streets.

此前，马德里、巴斯克地区和巴伦西亚已经出现了首批冠状病毒死亡病例，

Populists such as the far-right party Vox have accused prime minister Pedro Sanchez of putting feminist politics above public health,

极右翼政党沃克斯等民粹主义者指责总理佩德罗·桑切斯将女权主义政治置于公众健康之上，

but Vox also held a mass meeting at a Madrid bullring that day.

但是沃克斯当天也在马德里斗牛场举行了一次群众大会。

The truth is that few politicians took the threat of Covid-19 sufficiently seriously at first,

事实是，最初很少有政治家认真对待新冠肺炎带来的威胁，

and while some scientists were warning of impending danger,

当一些科学家对即将到来的危险发出警告时，

most people in Spain did not realise that the dramatic explosion of cases that began a few weeks before in Italy was just about to happen here as well.

西班牙的大多数人都没有意识到，几周前意大利病例的突然爆发即将要出现在西班牙。

In Santo Domingo, there were already clues about what was to come.

在圣多明戈，已经有了会发生什么事情的线索。

On 8 March, two elderly inhabitants, María Isabel Aizpurua and Valentin Perez, passed away – part of an unusual five-day spike in deaths.

在不正常的死亡猛增的五天中，两位年长的居民玛丽亚·伊莎贝尔·艾兹普阿和瓦伦汀·佩雷斯于3月8日去世。

In that short period, six people died, seven times higher than could usually be expected in that time period.

短短数日就有六人死亡，这要比预计的数字高七倍。

It’s possible that Covid-19 had claimed lives in the town even before then.

甚至在那之前，新冠肺炎就可能已经夺去该镇人的生命。

Two deaths recorded earlier in the month now look suspicious, though it’s impossible to know the cause for certain.

本月早些时候记录的两起死亡事件现在看起来很可疑，尽管无法确定死亡原因。

“The dead weren’t being tested,” said a doctor who dealt with some of them, but asked not to be named. “So who knows?”

一位治疗过其中一些人的医生说：“那些死者还没有接受检查。”但是他不愿透露姓名。“所以，谁知道呢？”