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Earlier chapters in this publication looked at some of the social and economic impacts of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. These impacts forced many citizens in spring 2020 to turn to the government for support. Public Administrations responded by putting numerous measures in place similarly to the rest of European welfare states. These measures were sometimes an extension of the work that was already being carried out by the national, regional and local administrations. On other occasions, they were new initiatives. The actions taken by the public sector are covered in other chapters of this publication.
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[[File:Logo_Monografía.jpg|right|thumb|none|300px|Statistical graph: Main food products dispensed by the Spanish Federation of Food Banks. 2019-2020. Spain.]]
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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 [[:File:People assisted by the Spanish Red Cross during the first wave of the pandemic |''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.
Cáritas recorded a 59% increase in the amount of people assisted and a 77% increase in requests for support. Given the circumstances, the vast majority of those requests came through electronic channels; online consultations leapt from 17% to 78% of the requests to this organisation. Most came from people under fragile labour conditions (food and beverage sector, domestic workers, etc.), from unemployed, from those on furloughs, from ‘black economy’ workers and from single-parent families predominantly women. One in three applicants had not requested help for over a year, and for 26% of them it was the first time they approached Cáritas for support.
The emergence of citizen solidarity initiatives during the first months of the pandemic gave rise to various internet applications aimed at advertising their existence and raising awareness amongst potential users. One of these was the SOLIVID network, which aimed at spreading the word about solidarity initiatives as well as gathering information for research. The network was launched at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in April 2020, is currently made up of 34 research groups from 12 countries and has registered 3,000 solidarity initiatives in 28 countries (primarily in Europe and Latin America) through collaborative mapping. SOLIVID had identified and located 878 solidarity initiatives in Spain towards the end of June 2020. Even though these initiatives do not thoroughly list the full range of citizen solidarity initiatives that arose during the first wave of the pandemic, they do provide a significant sample for assessing the importance of this experience.
The varied spheres of action confirm the transversality of the solidarity initiatives and their actions (see the graph on [[:File:Solidarity initiatives during the pandemic according to sphere of action|''Solidarity initiatives during the pandemic according to sphere of action'']]). About two-thirds of the initiatives may be grouped under the common heading ‘support for vulnerable groups’. These initiatives were also very much autonomous as only 17% claim to have worked jointly with or received support from public administrations or other institutions, whilst this public funding applied to 24% of cases in Argentina, 38% in Italy and 45% in Colombia.
Data also highlight the limitations of citizen action in the face of the crisis, with one of the most relevant drawbacks being its unequal geographical deployment. The maps for five big Spanish cities, i.e. Madrid, Barcelona, València, Seville (Sevilla) and Bilbao, based on a sample of 271 initiatives, show quite consistently that the initiatives emerged powerfully in medium to medium-high income neighbourhoods, more than in vulnerable or very well-off ones. According to data from the National Statistics Institute, 43% of the initiatives registered in these cities were in neighbourhoods with average incomes in the sixth, seventh and eighth decile in the distribution of household income. Thus, the widespread of solidarity initiatives through the Internet was related to the need for them as well as with the human resources available and with the ability to organise these initiatives in a given area.
