Bar Counters and Convivence

Le Nouvel Obs (Paris, 20 February 2026) offers a refreshing compass: what if democracy also depends… on a bar counter? In “Why we should raise a glass with our neighbours… and not only them” (Pourquoi il faut trinquer avec ses voisins… et pas qu’eux), Véronique Radier draws on a study by Hugo Subtil (University of Zurich) that overturns an all-too-convenient reflex: everyday conversations —sometimes messy, sometimes contradictory—are not necessarily breeding grounds for the worst. They can, on the contrary, defuse radicalisation.

The finding is striking: when bars disappear, support for political extremes rises year after year; when a place reopens, the trend gradually reverses. As if the simple act of bumping into one another, talking, and disagreeing without disqualifying each other brings oxygen back into the social body. Here, democracy is not an abstraction: it is built in concrete spaces where we learn to deal with others.

This echoes the central idea of the book La tiranía de las naciones pantalla: our “screen-nations” promise connection, yet often organise a gentle separation —comfortable isolation, risk-free conversation, and community without otherness. We choose people like us, avoid friction, and replace neighbours with algorithms. But democracy is not a newsfeed: it is the art of manageable disagreement —the art of convivence.

Véronique Radier says it without moralising: the less we know one another, the less we talk, the more we come to hate each other. So yes, let’s raise a glass. Not to escape the world, but to return to it, at the table, where words become shared again.