The sound of silence: my Andalusian lockdown revisited

Lockdown fell mercilessly while Julian Machin was staying in a fishing village near the border with Portugal, cutting him off from his life in Seville. Together with his dog Ikaro, they watched the natural world burst into life around the deserted beach

Sketches of Spain: Julian’s time spent in isolation with Ikaro (Julian Machin/The Independent)

It began on 16 March 2020, three days after a state of emergency was announced by megaphone from a moving police car. I remember sitting with my dog Ikaro on the low wall outside our holiday apartment, watching the sea and trying to take stock of the unsettling calm. The long beach was empty and the evening sun slanted on a group of seabirds silently taking stock. From the bushes and trees behind, the multiple lyrics of the usual finches and sparrows had expanded in the quiet around them. Ikaro, forever with his ball and my devoted companion, was my passport to relative freedom. This remote corner of Andalusia was a beautiful place in which to be marooned. The sea was a few metres distant, its marvellous rhythms a meditation on the acceptance of sorrow and the minimising of fear. There was an ever-changing and inspiring sky. The cessation of human activity was giving way to an exhalation of the natural world.

My Spanish partner, Jonatan, caught in Seville, assured me that being out with Ikaro was permitted, so I took to cycling along the winding beach path beneath its emerald canopy of mushroom pines. Already a section of downed police tape flapped like a wounded bird, giving access the beach. I continued in my habit of picking up plastic, noting how quickly litter levels decreased. Daily, I added to my collection of the shimmering, coloured shells so typical of the region. Paw and footprints in the sand were ours and ours alone. Many more birds – unknown to me – appeared and sounded ever more joyful. They dropped seeds of wildflowers on the beach that seemed to bloom almost overnight in the sand. Fish evidently approached the shallows in great numbers, bringing clouds of Audouin’s gulls who targeted them like arrows. Hedgehogs began shuffling casually up and down past my sitting room window, and now confident geckos and lizards ventured ever further. Nature was delighting in its newfound ability to gather and spread – the worldwide scale of which I discovered much later.

The beach in front of Julian’s apartment (Julian Machin)