The story produces its images as much as the images generate its story. And in the words of the French semiologist and film theorist Christian Metz, images contain a non-linguistic language. The confinement has had its narrative process and we, viewers, have been the protagonists of a historical status where reality has far surpassed fiction. From our domestic armchairs we have watched daily, through our televisions, a government-produced media script through which the members of the Executive and its technicians have been informing us of the state, evolution and management of the pandemic. And in the appearances, no detail, neither scenographic nor protocol, was left to chance.

The Government reached our homes through the screen in a unidirectional communication -television does not allow any other alternative between transmitter and receiver-. And the bidirectional screen has also been, for some months, the window used by the Executive to continue governing the country.

Videoconferences have been and are a necessary instrument for work, but they have also become a focus of information in themselves. From the Presidency of the Government we have received images of the head of Government holding meetings by this means with virological experts, with other members of the committee of Ministers, with regional presidents and with authorities from G-20 countries, and the format of his televised public appearances was changed by inserting the multiple connection with accredited journalists, allowing a new format of lecture press conference. The country had to continue to function in spite of the virus and the videoconference, as a technological alternative facilitating health security, became a bridge that helped in this temporary transition between before and after the shock caused by the Coronavirus.

The Royal Family also participated in this dynamic of communication before resuming its diary and usual activities. And, in this line, we have all been able to witness in the media images of the King and Queen -both jointly and separately- sitting at a noble wooden table surrounded by documentation and with a screen in front of them, holding meetings with social agents, authorities, businessmen..., conveying to the country an image of interest, support and concern in order to provide all the means to alleviate and respond to the crisis that the pandemic was generating.

The images were recorded or taken from the offices of work de la Moncloa and de la Zarzuela, respectively, and with a formal label in suit and tie, they transmitted to the public opinion the message of seriousness that the high institutions of the State were present and active, as they should be. It was the story within the story.

Going down to the communicative element itself, it should be noted that in the format of the video meeting we must be aware that not only communicates our self, our way of dressing, of gesturing, of speaking..., but the framework of our surroundings -the daily landscape as the photographer Luigi Ghirri would say- also participates in the overall image that we transmit to our interlocutors.

Videoconferences, like the filming of a movie, require a technical script, props, the choice of a suitable location -for its lighting conditions, space and absence of noise- and its costumes. A Library Services in the background, some paintings, the flags of Spain and the European Union... have been, among others, the scenographic elements used by the Presidency of the Government and the Head of State in the shots launched to support and transmit a neat institutional aesthetics. They represent and personify the vault of the State structure and as such, their image and the message they convey to the citizens require the dignity and respectability associated with the symbol they embody.

But without the need to look to the institutional heights, there is a connatural acceptance of decorum in these video meetings that have nothing to do with our personal recordings closer to the idea of Vertov's Eye-Cinema. Hence its absence in some representatives of local politics -beach funds or exits from the shower without any subject of tapujo-, has been criticized for the little respectability that their actions manifested, first, towards their colleagues of meeting, towards the position they represent and the work they perform and, in final, towards the citizenship that votes them and pays their emoluments.

It is true that our home is our intimate space, but the moment we activate a video call or a videoconference, that island of freedom comes under the close and direct public gaze. And in a work environment, we have to be aware that the setting conveys an image that affects us. So not only do we have to keep our manners in this subject of meetings and behave and dress-at least from torso to head-as if there were no screen, but we become responsible for the framework that surrounds us. Although sometimes, no matter how much of a perfectionist we are, we can't control the whole design picture and a home videoconference can become, by divine Providence, the springboard to stardom for one of our offspring or pets.