I've gone five days without Rodalies. Five days of absolute chaos for me and for hundreds of thousands of people who depend on the train to go to work, study, or simply arrive on time for our lives.
I'm not talking about a minor inconvenience. I'm talking about losing hours every day, being late for work, constantly giving explanations that no one asks for when the problem is structural, living with the permanent uncertainty of not knowing if you'll be able to get there or not. I'm talking about frustration, exhaustion, and a growing sense of abandonment.
Meanwhile, the Catalan government's response has been a succession of cynical statements, full of empty words and without any assumption of responsibility. **Asking for patience from a citizenry that complies, pays, and never fails, while losing their jobs, time, and dignity, is not only insufficient, it is indecent and insulting.**
This is not an isolated incident. It is institutional negligence. Year after year, a collapsed, underfunded, and mismanaged service is normalized. And when everything finally falls apart, excuses are handed out as if they were solutions. Offering free services does not compensate for failure; it makes a mockery of it. Propaganda does not replace management.
As a Rodalies commuter, I'm not surprised by people's disaffection, anger, or protest vote. None of that comes out of nowhere; it's cultivated every day that the disaster is accepted as normal and citizens are treated as resigned subjects, forced to put up with everything
This is not governing. It is abdicating. And this failure has those responsible, it has names and it has positions. Denying it only worsens the damage and deepens the gap between institutions and those of us who depend on them to live.