Accustomed to associating the adjective orbital with astronautics, the fact that from now on a train line will carry it makes it a bit pretentious and full of fanfare, as if the signatories of the agreement needed to make us notice that it is a premium line and not a miserable one, like the others.
We won't touch the stars, but we'll keep our feet on the ground, and a train from Maresme to Garraf, passing through the Vallesos, Baix Llobregat, and Penedès, will provide a necessary service to the (im)mobility of the metropolitan area of Barcelona on a daily basis. It's true that it won't be finished for another fifteen years (if Spain wants it), but there's no point in complaining when we don't plan and complaining when we have a long-term project.
The political problem, therefore, is not what, but who; that is, the null, culpable, and bloody credibility of the State in Catalonia regarding public works investments, especially railway ones. And it's also about how: that a train that has emerged from the drawer where it has been gathering dust for two decades is the rocket launched into the sky to celebrate a budget agreement that was discounted but needed a bow, doesn't help either.
The problem is one of scale: the new financing, like the orbital train or the control of the Zona Franca by Catalan administrations, are fish of different sizes but fish in the basket, after all. And Catalonia's problems in terms of financing, economic model, or integration are too big to be solved with the old grab-and-run formula. Everyone sees this. The material reasons that led more than two million Catalans to move for independence remain very much in force. Thus, it will be difficult for us to ever put the country into orbit.
