The dark shadow that sleeps in the open

According to tradition, a poor couple arrived in Bethlehem one very cold night. They had nowhere to shelter and were about to have a child. Jesus was born in a cave, and seeing such vulnerability, everyone around them was moved: angels, shepherds, and even kings. 2,000 years later, we still reflect on this story.

We are also experiencing cold days, and Christmas is approaching with all its invocation of love, tenderness, happiness, and brotherhood. And at the same time, a piece of news so painful it's almost shameful has barely reached the public sphere: Barcelona's municipal teams have counted 1,784 people sleeping in public spaces up to November, 203 more than in October 2024. Our beautiful Barcelona, ​​a global tourist attraction to which we dedicate the city's best spaces, There is no room for more people and they sleep in the open.Exposed to any kind of aggression, without a safe haven. A third of the children living in Catalonia live below the poverty line, while the number of great fortunes grows. How can we bear so much contradiction and absurdity, being moved by the poverty of an ancient newborn and speaking of equality and human rights?

This is not a phenomenon exclusive to our city, of course. The same thing happens in every city in Catalonia and everywhere else; city councils are working, but they can't keep up. There are foundations, like Arrels, Càritas, and others, that also do what they can. Everything is insufficient: we live in a world that systematically creates marginalized people, and the existing support networks are not prepared to deal with it. Nor is anyone.

Because what are we, the citizens, doing? As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the sociologist Georg Simmel sensed a profound change in the social relationships we establish in cities and in our reactions. What is it about? Well, it's about the fact that, in a city—and now in any region—our societies bombard us with such a vast amount of contact and often painful information that we feel overwhelmed. Almost to survive, and to preserve our privacy, we tend to shield ourselves from the misfortunes of others, to try to cope. To alleviate the discomfort all this causes us, we find arguments: we think it's not in our hands to provide solutions, that we can't bear the burden of the many needs that surround us. The quick glance I cast, as I pass by, at the dark shadow lying on the ground pains me, but I try to ignore it so I can continue on my way, hoping, of course, that at least my taxes will help those who so desperately need it.

This attitude, which we have developed as society has grown and become more complex, is a form of self-defense and has advantages. It allows us to preserve our freedom. No one forces us to be altruistic anymore. But it has drawbacks: it contributes to the growth of individualism, which we now witness constantly, and it isolates us and makes us fear that we will not find support if we don't go out alone one day. In older and smaller societies, people were called to "do charity," to have compassion for the poor and give them alms and lodging: it was almost a condition for being admitted, later, to heaven. It was also a condition of humanity itself, of being "a good person." But those values are now distant. And they are distant, to a large extent, because we think that individual compassion is not the right way to solve problems, that it should be the administration, "the system," that has foreseen them and finds definitive solutions.

And it's true: it's not in our small, individual hands to solve the great collective problems, but we should assume the responsibility of demanding that those we elect are capable of doing so and that they prioritize what is truly important because it threatens the lives of so many people. We place our individual responsibilities in their hands, but it is necessary to demand that they fulfill them. And the way to do this is not only by creating more shelters for the homeless: it is by preventing anyone from reaching a situation like this in the first place.

In this politically complicated moment, we need, more than ever, to rise up against inequalities that pose a threat to life: to the lives of the marginalized, obviously, and to everyone's lives, because marginalization can befall us any day. Perhaps in this way, Christmas will once again be something more than a winter solstice dressed up as an old, faded tradition.