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One of the most outstanding community initiatives in this sense is the Radars project, promoted by social services since 2008. The project is especially for senior citizens over the age of 65 who live alone or with another elderly person, as well as those who have a limited support network and/or autonomy, which can make them feel lonely. A network of ‘Radars’ is created (neighbours, shopkeepers, neighbourhood associations, etc.) who watch over the elderly people in their area and informs social services professionals if they detect potential risks. This detection also involves neighbourhood health centres and pharmacies, who intervene as ‘specialised radars’, as they also help to resolve problems. Furthermore, the Radars project is geared towards developing actions in coordination with neighbourhood organizations and local facilities (neighbourhood and civic centres, libraries, etc.), which foster a connection between senior citizens and their neighbours. It is a way of helping to create social connections and combat social isolation.²

Radars can be interpreted as the activation of dynamics that return to what had previously existed in a natural and plentiful way in nearly all the city's neighbourhoods, influenced by values, social norms, and needs that gave local relationships a central role in everyday life. People counted on the support of the community, of their neighbours. To a lesser or greater degree, this way of living the neighbourhood, of experiencing and feeling it as if it were a small town – as indeed the old centres of many modern‐day Barcelona districts were – has been progressively lost. However, one of the risks of the Radars project – or of any strategy that promotes mutual aid – is that it does not explicitly include mechanisms that foster equity in care, which means that the burden of neighbourhood co‐responsibility continues to fall on the shoulders of women (Moreno‐Colom 2018). This is one of the challenges that has to be faced up to henceforth.