By own means

Monday 27. Fire in the metro, wagons full of smoke, ambulances, injured. Little surprise and little scandal. My experience, one in millions. Wednesday 15, 11.45 a.m. I get in the car to catch the train in Caldes de Malavella. 12.20 p.m. At the ticket office they tell me I'm lucky: there's a strike but the driver of the next train isn't participating. 1.00 p.m. Halfway there, public address: “Due to a gas leak, this train will stop at Cardedeu. We will open the doors in case anyone wants to continue on their own.” Temperature on the platform, 38º. I hear some drivers talking amongst themselves: a taxi is coming to pick them up and the train will go back, but they won't inform the passengers for now. The tourists stay on the train. 1.20 p.m. The locals queue up on our own at a bus stop. 1.45 p.m. I'm lucky, I get on the bus. 2.10 p.m. In Granollers, I catch a Sagalés to Barcelona. Everyone gets on. The aisle is a tin of sweaty sardines. “I lived in Bolivia, that's the standard there,” says a passenger. The air conditioning can't cope and anxiety spreads. “There's a hammer over there to break the window,” I reassure a lady who is choking. We rush like crazy on the highway. 3.00 p.m. Fabra i Puig. Two metro and FCG transfers. In total, about €20 extra in tickets. I arrive after 4 p.m. to the 3 p.m. meeting, dirty, tired, and starving. More than four hours to travel a hundred kilometers (24 km/h).

To return, minimum services with the usual delays and misinformation. It's a chance when the train passes, so we have to wait on the platform. We're boiling with heat. In the morning, I said at home: “Strike? It must be sarcasm, the difference won't be noticed.” I was wrong. I ask for a refund for the trip money, but my train was running on strike schedule and I'm not entitled to it.Wednesday 22nd, 3:00 p.m. I get back on the train in Caldes. 3:30 p.m. It stops again in Cardedeu. 5:00 p.m. Granollers. Announcement: the train will stop here, take the L2. But no trains are running. People crowded on the platform. No information. Very hot. I give up on Barcelona. 6:00 p.m. I take refuge in the only stopped train that is open. If it starts, we don't know where it's going. "A Kinder Surprise train," says a girl. No information. 7:40 p.m. I'm back in Caldes. More than 5 hours, and without reaching Barcelona. The mess of a sinkhole in Moncada will cut off the train lines for a few days.Neglect and corruption reinforce each other, but the humiliating disinformation, the mistreatment of passengers, and the impressive loss of hours rather make me see trains as part of a mechanism of submission and discipline, of repression and misery, more designed to distance than to arrive anywhere.