Whether you're on a weekend or a weekday, early in the morning or at lunchtime, summer or winter, at some point you're bound to find yourself stuck on the AP-7. The volume of traffic that motorway drivers endure is overwhelming, even distressing.
From your car, you watch as 40-ton trailers zoom past you at full speed, overtaking one another, pushing the speed limit in endless maneuvers that cause queues and urgent braking, with all four indicators on, not the rearview mirror, as if you could avoid collisions with just a glance.
The feeling of being in the flashing lane is constant, and the search for the fastest escape route turns driving into a video game race rather than a safe activity. Everyone is racing as fast as they can, as if they're being chased by the monster of a traffic jam—the current one or the one you're sure to encounter later, because the navigation screen is already announcing it in a furious red, with the estimated arrival time dramatically extended.
The Highway Code is fading away. You can be overtaken on the right as well as the left, safe distance is a luxury of the past, and giving way when merging has become useless, a vague memory of the driver's license test, because on the motorway you enter and exit at full speed. The AP7 and, in general, the high-capacity roads that descend and ascend toward the metropolitan ring road are the continuation of Barcelona's crush by other means, a nightmare come true, evidence of a country with daily mobility on the verge of collapse, and the place where you wonder, alone, with the radio and the air conditioning on.
