Walter Benjamin wrote that happiness consists in living without fear. These days, with the state of alarm recently declared, in Spain you cannot live without fear (or at least, without fear for the lives of many people). Nor should it be so: courage does not consist in not being afraid —that is recklessness—but in mastering it, doing what needs to be done and moving on. Right now, that’s what it’s about.

—Spanish author Javier Cercas in El País.