The first wave of the Arab Spring didn’t spread immediately to Lebanon, but it didn’t take long for the effects to be felt here. One and a half million Syrians took refuge in here, to escape the civil war at home. Over the past decade there have been two major protests movements here, in 2011 and 2015. They were a foreshadowing of what was to come. Although the Lebanese state was collapsing slowly, it took a disaster to trigger national revolt. The events of late 2019 marked a shift in Lebanon but it was events that followed that continue to shape it today.