Health

Baarle, a town with a thousand borders in the middle of the pandemic

Baarle (Belgium / Netherlands), May 2 (EFE) .- (Camera: Leo Rodríguez) Two municipalities, two churches, two police forces ... and two packages of Covid-19 measures in a town shared by the Netherlands and Belgium. This is Baarle, the town of the "thousand borders", where managing the restrictions of the pandemic has not been an easy task.FOOTAGE OF BARLEESOUNDBITES BY THE MAYOR OF THE BELGIAN PART, FRANS DE BON AND WILLEM VAN HOOL, WORKERTRANSLATION DE BON "There are 22 little Belgian islands, so you see a lot of borders through the houses, through the buildings. You can see the border through our council chamber, so the borders between Belgium and the Netherlands are everywhere. " "We had to make a declaration of honor that we live here, that this was our territory, that we had to be able to go to the Netherlands and Belgium, to the shops." "Problems arose when we had something together. We have a joint Belgian-Dutch cultural center, a joint Belgian and Dutch library, and an environmental street, and then we had to make a decision, and we said: we are going to apply the highest standards during the crown period. That was a bit annoying and then of course you have the rules like that in Belgium the border is closed. That made it difficult to comply with the rule, which was very annoying. " "We are becoming a kind of European municipality. I am Belgian and my wife is Dutch, so it is a mixture of inhabitants, Belgian and Dutch, both in Baarle Nassau and in Baarle Hertog."