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Carlos Delclós writes this text from Barcelona, and highlights the historic politicization of balconies in Spain, between the display of a majority of Catalan flags in that city or, in contrast, the majority of Spanish flags on Madrid's balconies. The radicalization of the speech of the political right in Spain focuses on the idea of a putative national unity.

For Delclós, the COVID-19 pandemic, more than an illusory notion of national unity, showed the strength of cooperation and social solidarity, direct heirs in this crisis in the tradition of social movements and grassroots struggles and dense networks of social support built from the the indignados movement. Social dynamics and the strength of social ties are not structured from nothing, but from long paths of struggle and social and political emancipation.