In Spain, 7 April

"I start this text calling everyone to practice social distancing measures and to stay at home when possible. Everyday, there are a lot of people who are dying due to COVID-19.

In Spain, the situation is very hard to believe. Daily, hundreds of people are dying. The hospitals are at maximum capacity and more and more sanitary workers are getting infected with COVID-19. The government has taken very hard isolation measures, which we all must accept not only for our own safety, but mostly for our older generations, who worked hard and cared always for us. We cannot let them die, we owe everything to them, and we love them.

It is in the hard times where people show what they are really made of. Since this started, every single day at exactly 20:00, everybody in Spain goes to the window or to the balcony, and we clap together, to say thank you to all of our sanitary workers, that are fighting with the virus and risking their own life. To say thank you to the police, that is ensuring that everybody respects the isolation measures. To say thank you, to the army, that has opened campaign hospitals, disinfecting the streets and making huge efforts to help to win this war against this invisible virus. And to say thank you, to everybody else that is out there risking their life for us.

Besides all the hard times and negative feelings, we must stay as positive as we can. I personally think that we have the obligation of helping wherever we can to overcome the virus and learning from this to avoid something similar in the future.

Some of us, students, may think that this is “bad, because our study program can get longer”, but again I see this as an opportunity. I have used this delay in the beginning of the semester to improve my German, that to me is as important as my Master’s degree. I am very proud of belonging to the Hochschule Esslingen, I can see how hard they are all working trying to offer online learning opportunities to all of us, not leaving anyone behind. Thanks to all of you, I really feel supported.

I would like to finish with a message of hope to everybody. Sooner or latter we will beat the virus and recover our life, just be patient, and again stay at home. As the prime minister of Italy told to all the Spanish people in the television this week, “let’s stay away today, so that we can hug each other again tomorrow”. And to all my fellow students that are not as lucky as me to be able to travel home, stay strong, I admire you all and wish you the very best."