Commuter rail or back to square one

It doesn't seem likely that the two demonstrations called for Saturday in Barcelona regarding the commuter rail chaos will surpass the turnout seen in December 2007 during a protest against a similar crisis. Firstly, because that was a wake-up call, while what's happening now is a...remakeAnd second, because we've already said everything to each other. Even more than that: we've said everything, including the independence referendum, the suspension of autonomy, the imprisonment of politicians and activists, and a few pitched battles with the police. We were the angry Catalans, and now we're the crippled Catalans.

Furthermore, the 2007 demonstration was a variation of the age-old "Listen, Spain." It was a simultaneous act of denunciation and national affirmation. Saturday's demonstrations are burdened by the disappointment of having seen so much unity sacrificed on the altar of internal misgivings and the personal agendas of supposed strategists. Repression has done damage, but disunity has done much more. That's why there isn't one demonstration, but two.

It's touching to see that the 2007 manifesto called for the transfer of the transport and infrastructure network, tax collection and management in Catalonia, and the publication of fiscal balances to the Generalitat (Catalan government). We're back where we started, at the beginning of Monopoly, after a stint in prison. What more can we say to them, and what more can we say to ourselves, when 18 years have passed and we're still just as late for work on trains with broken tracks and stations with out-of-service elevators, and Catalonia continues to live under the premeditated suffocation that Trias Fargas described? It's always good to raise our voices to demand the things that have been denied us, but the grief over the lost opportunity has turned the 2007 legion into a nation of jaded skeptics.