Changes

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</ul></div>The Spanish Red Cross stepped up the efforts to protect vulnerable people with an action plan called “The Red Cross RESPONDS”. This organisation continued to help those who were already being assisted and, in addition, acted as an auxiliary support agent for the public administrations. An analysis of beneficiaries by age shows that help was most commonly provided to people from 30 to 49 years of age and to those over 70, whilst the breakdown by sex reveals that 64% of those assisted were women. As the graph on the People assisted by the Spanish Red Cross during the first wave of the pandemic depicts, this organisation carried out over 820,000 ‘health’-focused awareness-raising activities to promote measures to prevent and contain the effects of the pandemic. In addition, 110 temporary shelters for over 5,300 homeless people and 30 hospital infrastructures were set up as part of the ‘relief’ actions. Nearly 850,000 food deliveries were made and 600,000 people were assisted under the heading of ‘social inclusion’ actions. Over 50,000 educational support activities were carried out under the heading of ‘education’ actions. Some 50,000 people in fuel poverty were assisted under the heading of ‘environment’ actions. And 62,000 people were assisted under ‘employment’ actions. This organisation was also involved in conveying many patients to hospitals. The Spanish Red Cross mobilised 50,000 volunteers to deploy these actions, of which 58% were women and 47% were between 20 and 39 years of age. In short, the Spanish Red Cross assisted over 3.5 million people and issued over 9 million responses through the website.

The Spanish Federation of Food Banks experienced a period of intense activity during the second quarter of 2020, with the number of operations far exceeding previously recorded figures. Over 32.1 million kilograms/litres of food were dispensed from April to June 2020, 30% more than in the same quarter of the previous year.

{{ANEAutoria|Autores= Rafael Córdoba Hernández, Joan Font Fábregas, José Manuel Gómez Giménez, Isabel González García and José Sancho Comíns}}

{{ANETextoEpigrafe|epigrafe=The pandemic and solidarity on Twitter}}

[[File:Logo_Monografía.jpg|right|thumb|none|300px|Statistical graph: Evolution in the amount of tweets including solidarity hashtags published during the first wave of the pandemic. 2020. Spain.]]

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{{ANEAutoria|Autores= Juan Luis Bermúdez González, Francisco Escobar Martínez and Nieves López Estébanez}}

{{ANETextoEpigrafe|epigrafe=Citizen solidarity initiatives}}

The action of the public administrations and third-sector institutions played an essential role in lessening the impact of the pandemic on health and social issues, as detailed in the previous paragraphs. Furthermore, these initiatives were complemented by spontaneous citizen solidarity initiatives.

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</ul></div>Outbreaks of solidarity initiatives have been seen before in Spain as well as in other countries, particularly during the 2008-2013 financial crisis, and many of those that emerged during the COVID-19 crisis were ephemeral. Nonetheless, their roll-out helped lessen the effects of the crisis on peoples’ living conditions, even in countries with a well-developed welfare state, like Spain. The experience showed that the persistence of these initiatives and their potential to transform societies depend on their ability to combine the provision of effective social support with the organisation of citizens to claim their rights as well as with the promotion of alternative ways of producing goods and services.

{{ANEPaginaDescargas (monografía COVID-19)}}