Spain has suffered more covid-19 deaths than any country save Italy

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WITH ITS carefully spaced empty white beds laid across the dark floor, the pavilion of Madrid’s exhibition centre looked like an installation left over from last month’s contemporary art fair. In fact it is a field hospital, set up by the army in 18 hours on March 22nd. Three days later it housed more than 300 coronavirus patients, and was being expanded to take up to 5,500. It is the front line in what Spain’s Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has called “the most serious situation the country has faced since the civil war”.