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How to live and work in quarantine in Barcelona

Since the end of last week, our PR director Tanya Komarova found herself in a situation where quarantine at work and in schools is no longer voluntary, but mandatory. We talked with her about what happens, how people adapt and what they expect next.


“We did not provide for a second home office at home, so the place of the loser looks like this,” writes Tanya.

The conversation itself took place on Saturday, March 14: in the afternoon Moscow time, and in the morning - according to Catalan time. Everything that happened afterwards was taken out in quotes from correspondence with Tanya.

“You are not a tourist who happened to be at the epicenter; you have been in Spain with your family for a long time.” Can you tell the background?

Yes, I have been living in Barcelona for 2.5 years: my husband went here to study at a business school, my daughter and I, of course, also went with him. Around the same time, I started working with Skyeng, and this was my first normal experience of being removed. Before that, there were many years of regular office work [PR in Yandex and not only - approx.] And a bit of freelance from home.

- I found out about restrictions in Spain when our developer was not allowed to attend a conference there at the beginning of the week. Can you tell me what is happening there, what is the situation: what is possible, what is impossible, how long? But it all started to happen to you earlier.

The first big event is the cancellation of the mobile congress at the end of February. Then the majority was skeptical of the virus, it looked like alarmism: it seemed enough for Chinese companies to quarantine their employees and that’s it.

On February 26, the first sick person was diagnosed in Barcelona: I remember this date well, because on this day I got a sore throat.


Naturally, it was rather nervous - your temperature rises sharply and you think that suddenly I am the second sick in Barcelona. Need to go to the hospital, it scares. But a week and a half ago, even doctors apologized for wearing masks. And now it has already begun: don’t go a meter, don’t pass me the documents, I’ll just look at them.

Yesterday, we had to go to a local clinic to write out state insurance policies - and everything looks like they are waiting for that same zombie apocalypse. Directly in front of the reception desk in the hospital, tables are set up and ribbons are pulled so that people do not come closer than a meter to the window. Speaking of masks, they probably haven’t been around since the beginning of February.


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And we expect school quarantine to last a month. We have parents in the class who work in the hospital, and thanks to their stories about the situation that the doctors see, everyone gradually realized that this was not just a tantrum.

Just a couple of weeks ago, all this was seen differently: I remember that we were discussing with other parents that the fear of coronavirus was greatly exaggerated, and on February 29 we were gathering with friends for a joke, and we thought that this would absolutely not affect us. This opinion was characteristic of both Russians and Spaniards.

- On Friday, we, Yandex and many other companies began to ask those who have not yet worked remotely to switch to this format. How was it with you?

Here, employers began experimenting with the remote in the first week of March: my husband spent several days at home as part of testing the infrastructure load at his company. But everyone was forcibly transferred a couple of days ago.

Even a weekend ago, everything seemed calm. Only when the schools in Madrid were closed at the beginning of that week, we tensed up and realized that this would happen soon with us.

From the evening of March 12, when it became known that schools were closing down, the situation was developing very rapidly.


State information is very well organized here through tools like chats in WhatsApp - all the necessary information and recommendations are quickly found there. Last night they announced that they closed all cafes and bars, entertainment facilities, closed shopping centers, parks and so on. All establishments, except those that sell food and medicine.
After the conversation, Tanya wrote:
March 14, 16:16 (Moscow time)

News from supermarkets. In the nearest supermarket with vegetables and fruits, the line is at the entrance, they are allowed in small portions, everyone is given gloves at the entrance. At Amazon Pantry (this is the delivery of products and all kinds of household chemicals), the nearest delivery is March 24th. Some supermarkets also have an online order with delivery, but to be honest, I never think that they also have a collapse.

Now there is a proposal to close the region for entry and exit: airports, ports, train stations and so on. I don’t know if these measures will be taken and how quickly. I think there will not be such tough measures as in China: another country, the attitude of the authorities towards people is different. A week ago, people would have reacted differently to such a restriction of rights and freedoms, they would have been terribly indignant. Now, most are very responsible for the recommendations.


“The place for walking now looks like this. But at least the views are pleasing, ”writes Tanya.

But we do not yet have such a strict quarantine: you can leave your home for matters not related to work, for example, shopping. Walking is not prohibited yet, but let's see what happens next
On Monday, March 16, morning, Tanya wrote:

Since Sunday, quarantine is already hard: you can’t leave home except for work, for groceries, to the hospital or for dog walking. All truth is developing very quickly. Penalty for violation of 600 euros.

- How has the attitude to the problem at the level of people changed? What does the people do, what new habits does it introduce?

The Spaniards as a whole have a much more relaxed attitude to hygiene than in Russia: there, washing their hands before eating is not an axiom, like ours. But now everything is changing. For example, it is customary to kiss on both cheeks when meeting and saying goodbye - this is not the most hygienic habit, which I already considered very dumb. Last week, everyone was observing this ritual.

And since March 12, everyone has already started talking to each other at a distance of a meter.


This is difficult for the Spaniards, of course, for them socialization and physical contact are important. In general, there are more purchases with delivery. I think it’s obvious that big loads await Amazon. True, another thing is more developed here: you come to the store, pick up the trolley, pay and leave everything at the checkout. And then the store itself packs this business and carries it home. It is absolutely certain that people began to buy more, because the number of such trolleys at cash desks has grown very strongly.

- You, like many, stayed for a couple of weeks with a child in the apartment. Tell me, do they explain to the children what is happening, what the authorities and the parents themselves think to do about it?

Our daughter is 4 years old, and although she goes to school, this is the age when they have more fun than they study. Therefore, I think that there will be no educational initiatives for their class. We ourselves were purchased with various stickers, activity books, plasticine - and all the entertainment that comes to hand. Plus, the links from the series are very actively distributed here: "40 ways to keep a child at home with the help of plasticine and sticks."

Comic books on how to tell children about coronavirus spread very quickly.




Interactive is spreading to make the child wash his hands: you draw him a small coronavirus every morning on his hand, and he needs to wash his hands during the day so that this picture does not remain on the hand. If the child does this within 20 days, then he gets some kind of surprise.


Very similar initiatives are born in other countries: for example, this is a photo from the post of one of the British mothers , who collected more than 1.5 thousand Facebook posts.

On the last day before the school closed, my daughter was also taught to wash her hands well. Now, when she washes her hands, she says, “Bye-bye, coronavirus.” They clearly had a good communication. Of course, the child is upset that he will not see school friends for a long time. But, I think, we will arrange some kind of phoning for them on the video.

For older children deploy online learning.



Official site with assignments for students of different ages.

Schools began to upload materials to their platforms and send them as homework, many language schools also translate all training online. Even dance schools open online classes. I don’t know how they will succeed: before that, the online history was not very developed, such platforms and tools, as in Russia, are not particularly here. I think that we in the family will actively develop Russian online platforms.


This is how the interface of the student’s office looks at the school where Tanya’s daughter is studying.

Parents whose children stayed at home, of course, found themselves in a difficult situation. How to entertain a child 24 hours a day is not very clear. Moreover, you also need to work.

- Many will voluntarily try udalenka. What should people do so that the efficiency does not fall?

Perhaps the question can be divided into two parts: what to do to the employee, and what to do to the leader who organizes the team. Let's start with personal questions that are often not thought of.

  • Make sure you have good internet at home . Because when two people start working from home at the same time, the load of video calls starts, the neighbors start doing the same thing, then everything may not be as rosy as it seemed to you when you used the channel in the evenings to read social networks.
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Well, all the recommendations that you need to organize the day are absolutely true, as if it was a normal office job: getting up on an alarm clock, changing clothes from pajamas, arranging a workplace that would not be a bed - these are some basic and most important things.

From the point of view of the team leader , probably everything is also pretty commonplace. If it is difficult for an employee to reorganize and self-organize, then he needs help. For the rest, write down tasks more clearly, do regular video stand-ups to understand what’s going on, quickly consult in the messengers. In order not to feel like you are robots, periodically call up on the video. And be sure to at least sometimes discuss some non-working topics - ideally, organize joint coffee drinking on video, etc.

- And the tools for udalenka? Everyone loves tools. Would you recommend something specific?

I’m not the coolest speaker in this regard, because my team is not technical and not very “well-worn” in the tools ... Although, maybe, when people massively switch to a remote site for the first time, they will just benefit from advice from people who are not so confused on technology.

Of what we use, it is Slack for written communication, Zoom for phoning, Google documents for working with texts, Trello for task management, well, sometimes Miro for all kinds of mindmaps. For small projects this is enough.

The most important thing is not to produce a thousand different tools.


Because the tin begins when you are told, “we are conducting this project in Airtable, this one in Jira, and this one in Asana”. And even logging in, registering everywhere takes a lot of your time. And to coordinate the activities that go in different tools ...

So yes, it seems, the most reasonable advice for “beginners”: the number of tools should be limited and they should be the same for the whole team. We for ourselves at one moment realized that the problems that you are trying to use new tools are often much more than good.

- Your relatives live in Russia, how do you explain the situation to them, how do they react to the situation, what do you tell them?

In general, before it seemed to me that the hysteria about the coronavirus in Russia is greater than here. Relatives were planning to come in late March (now, of course, no longer) and most of all asked: “How are you? Do you have toilet paper? Is nobody panicking? ” - And I laughed at them.


A fragment of the official training manual with recommendations that are distributed by chat in Barcelona.

My husband and I have very adequate parents, we constantly keep in touch through WhatsApp and phone calls. My sister lives in Seattle, they also closed schools for a month and everyone works from home. We have a family chat room “Moscow-Seattle-Barcelona”, we exchange reports there: who has what happens, what degree of real restrictions. The key is to constantly be in contact, call up more and constantly talk about how things are in order to reduce feelings. Fortunately, now there is time for this.

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