The handshake, the hug, the kiss -or the handshake as the ultimate expression of respect-, are expressions of greeting that build bridges of humanity between our self and the other. They break the psychological boundary that separates us from others and grant us identity. They are symbols traditionally used in our culture to show a myriad of non-verbal messages of friendship, love, recognition, respect, commitment, fidelity... that are an integral part of the behaviors we have learned to relate to our loved ones and in society.

We are accustomed, in general, to a physical contact of equality sustained in our democratic reality. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 broke down the barriers and separations associated with another political reality, and our relational expressions have come closer in a transversal way in the staff and professional spheres. Although it is sometimes difficult to combine closeness and Education.

Social distancing as a health response to Covid-19 has been a necessary but very drastic measure in this regard. We are not used to not touching each other. We are a society of contact with a close body language, far from the more rigid and hieratic oriental customs of expression founded on shows of respect and humility rooted in another political culture.

It can be understood that we have "orientalized" our forms of greeting for the sake of health safety. And aesthetically, it seems to be so. Not touching each other in the social greeting resembles us, a priori, to the Orient and the images we see daily of our politicians in the media project us to Asian cultural manners. And although the substratum of this subject of greeting or "no-greeting" is based on the fear of contagion and not on veneration, it is making us learn positively the sacred sense of self, although, negatively, the risk posed by the other.

The coronavirus, being a radically distorting element, has placed us in front of the value of life and Education, in these strange times, we paradoxically show it by omitting the traditional greeting. However, human ingenuity and our atavistic need for our fellow man have generated, since the beginning of the pandemic, communicative alternatives, of amusing expression, such as the "Wuhan shake", the elbow bump, the head movement... which, curiously, have been globalized through the networks, generating a planetary culture of greetings that are helping to unify humanity in the presence of the invader.

But even in the alternative of the new greetings or the "no greeting", just as in language, we establish its distinction depending on whether it is for formal or informal use. Thus, in the different institutional acts that we are attending these days in the search for a return to normality, and although we observe curious scenes of attempts at traditional greetings that respond to the good Education and to a protocol mechanics internalized by the protagonists -such as those of the King and the President of the Government in the act of reopening the border between Spain and Portugal-, a "protocol covid for official acts" is being created in which the prudent and also formal thing is to omit the greeting of contact. And in this context, the use of the bow with a nod of the head, traditionally due to the Crown, without a handshake, which we have seen performed in a sanitary and respectful manner by local representatives on the trips that the King and Queen have made to the different Spanish autonomous regions in support of the tourist sector, have dusted off and brought to the streets a gesture of maximum expression of respect for the highest institution of the State.

Democracy is not at odds with good manners and Education. The positive and positivist equality achieved and the closeness of the institutions should not make us lose respect for the other and the common. And in this sense, and paradoxically, the Covid-19 is making us reuse gestures and greetings that stage, even as a precaution of contagion, the "oriental" respect for others and for the symbols that unite us as a collective identity.