It has taken just six weeks for Spanish people to go from being overwhelmingly positive to overwhelmingly negative about how the recovery is progressing
Travellers returning from Spain have been caught by surprise after the government announced at short notice on Saturday evening that they would need to quarantine for two weeks once they got home.
The government cited a spike in new COVID-19 cases as the reason for the rapid change in policy.
While British tourists might be surprised by the situation, one group of people probably aren’t: the Spanish themselves.
As part of YouGov’s coronavirus monitor, a survey conducted from Thursday last week to Monday this week found that fully 82% of Spanish people believe the coronavirus situation nationally is getting worse.
Spanish confidence in the coronavirus situation has been falling since early June. On 11 June 89% of Spanish people believed that the pandemic was easing off or was completely over. Two weeks later it had fallen to 58%, and has since plummeted to just 13%.
They are similarly negative about the state of the disease globally: just 12% think things are improving worldwide, with 82% saying they are getting worse.