Balcony Applause for Health Workers in Europe, March 2020

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Originally published 2020-03-21.

Applause for Health Workers Across Europe in 2020

In mid-March 2020, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied the streets of southern Europe, people found a way to be loud together. At a set time each evening they opened their windows, stepped onto balconies and applauded the doctors, nurses and hospital staff working through the crisis. The nationwide ritual began in Italy and Spain on 14 March 2020 and spread within days to Greece, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and beyond.

This page collects videos of those first nights, explains how the idea travelled, and looks at what health workers themselves said they needed beyond the applause, including the story of Dr Marcello Natali, an Italian GP who worked without gloves and died of the virus.

How the balcony applause began

Italy was the first European country to lock down its entire population. On 9 March 2020 Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte extended strict restrictions to the whole country, and around 60 million people were told to stay at home. Within days, Italians started using their balconies as a stage. On 13 March people sang the national anthem together, and at noon on 14 March they clapped across the country to salute health workers, according to records of the Italian lockdown. Some of these events were organised through social media and radio; others simply happened.

Spain followed the same day. On 14 March the Spanish government's state of alarm came into force, the evening that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez addressed the nation about the new restrictions. Messages shared on WhatsApp and social media asked people to come out at 10 pm and clap for the "sanitarios", the health workers. When the hour came, the noise rolled through cities from Madrid to Pamplona.

The videos above and below give a sense of how sudden and widespread it was: whole apartment blocks clapping, people banging pots, neighbours who had never spoken now cheering together across a courtyard.

Spain's 10 pm applause

Spanish news outlets filmed the first night from rooftops and streets. El País shared footage from La Latina in central Madrid, where balconies filled with applause at 22:00, while the English-language site The Local Spain described the whole country bursting into applause in gratitude.





The applause quickly became a nightly appointment in Spain, later moving to 8 pm, and it lasted for weeks. For many people living alone, it was the one moment of the day when they saw and heard other people.

Greece, Switzerland and the rest of Europe

Greece had confirmed its first case on 26 February and recorded its first death on 12 March. By the middle of the month cafés, shops and museums had closed, and a general restriction on movement followed on 23 March. Greeks joined the balcony applause in those first lockdown days, thanking their own medical staff and sending a message of solidarity to Italians and Spaniards in the worst-hit countries.

In Switzerland, residents of Geneva were filmed clapping at 9 pm on 15 March. Similar events took place in France, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. In the United Kingdom, a Dutch woman living in London, Annemarie Plas, launched "Clap for Our Carers", which took place every Thursday at 8 pm from 26 March to 28 May 2020.

all of spain burst into a round of applause at 10 pm for doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers #AplausoSanitario
this is in pamplona <3 pic.twitter.com/Ss85iKhavP

— dani (@sqecter) March 14, 2020

(This post is no longer available on X.)



The gesture travelled across borders at a time when borders themselves were closing. That was part of its power: people who could not leave their homes still felt part of something bigger than their own street.

Dr Marcello Natali and the doctors without protection

Behind the applause was a frightening reality in hospitals and clinics. Dr Marcello Natali, 57, was a general practitioner in Codogno, in Lombardy, the town at the centre of Italy's first major outbreak. Speaking to Euronews before he fell ill, he said he had been forced to work without gloves because supplies had "run out", and that doctors had not been prepared for the virus.

After testing positive, Natali developed pneumonia in both lungs. He was taken to hospital in Cremona and then moved to Milan, where he died. His death was confirmed by the Italian Federation of General Practitioners in mid-March 2020.

He was far from alone. By 28 February, 14 of the 35 doctors in Codogno and nearby Casale were already in quarantine or hospital. Paola Pedrini, regional secretary of the federation, said that 110 of the 600 doctors in Bergamo province were sick, and that a mask meant to last half a day was being used for a week. On 18 March Italy recorded 475 deaths in a single day, bringing its total to almost 3,000. More than 60 Italian doctors had died with COVID-19 by the end of March, rising to 145 by late April.

What health workers said they really needed

Many doctors and nurses said the applause moved them to tears. It was a reminder that people noticed the long shifts, the fear of bringing the virus home and the patients they could not save.

But many also said, kindly but clearly, that clapping was not enough. Spain had more than 5,400 medical professionals test positive by 23 March 2020, and shortages of protective equipment put staff at risk across Europe. In the UK, some medical workers and commentators called the weekly clap an empty gesture after years of budget cuts. What health workers asked for was practical:

  • Protective equipment such as masks, gowns and gloves, in sufficient supply.
  • More staff, so that exhausted teams could rest.
  • Fair pay and secure contracts, especially for nurses and care workers.
  • Mental health support for the trauma of working through the pandemic.
  • Investment in public health systems that had been stretched by years of austerity, particularly in southern Europe after the debt crisis.

Those demands did not disappear once the clapping stopped. Staff shortages and burnout remained major issues in European health systems in the years after the pandemic.

Why the gesture still matters

Looking back, the balcony applause is remembered as one of the first shared rituals of the pandemic. It showed that even in isolation people wanted to connect, and that they understood who was carrying the heaviest load.

It also leaves a lesson worth keeping. Gratitude is real and it matters, but it carries more weight when it is followed by support at the ballot box, in public budgets and in everyday respect for people who work in hospitals and care homes. The noise from those balconies was a promise; keeping it is the harder part.

Sources: original piece written for Thinking Humanity by Nota Pan; Euronews, 18 March 2020: Italian doctor dies after working without gloves; Wikipedia: COVID-19 pandemic in Italy; Wikipedia: COVID-19 pandemic in Spain; Wikipedia: COVID-19 pandemic in Greece; Wikipedia: Clap for Our Carers. Videos and posts belong to their original creators.

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