With wild enthusiasm I read in ARA that the Government, the ministry, Renfe and Adif have announced "the deployment of a million-dollar works plan, distributed among various stations, which aims to transform these transit points into "dignified" infrastructures while the major works are pending". The major works will take years and perhaps, when they are done, we will already be stardust, to put it poetically. "The station is the gateway to the system, and its comfort speaks of what the user will find afterwards," said the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque. For example, at the Molins de Rei station, they will carry out works with an investment of "more than nine million after two years of being stalled". At Llinars del Vallès and Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, more than two million. At Sants, 150 million.

Quick and not excessively expensive actions at stations so that users begin to notice that something is improving. This is one of the lines of work that the Government has opted for to try to regain citizen confidence in Rodalies after its annus horribilis. The Government, the ministry, Renfe, and Adif have now announced the deployment of a plan for millionaire works, spread across various stations, which aims to transform these transit points into "decent" infrastructures while the major works, which will take years to complete and show results, are not yet underway.

The images of saturation on the platforms and crowds on trains to travel by train to the south of the country on the day of the eclipse continue to have repercussions. This Friday, two days after the chaos, the Government admitted that there was a "collapse" on Rodalies (commuter rail) during the afternoon of the astronomical phenomenon. But the Secretary of Mobility and Infrastructure, Manel Nadal, defended that it only occurred on the way south and that, on the other hand, the return "was orderly". However, in the evening, scenes of queues to enter the stations, especially those in Tarragona, and platforms packed to the brim were repeated, and Civil Protection had to activate the Ferrocat plan for crowds in pre-alert.

1. Fortunately, time does not stop and the eclipse has already passed. With it, collective history, fueled by the media (the role played by 3Cat, or TV3, or whatever it's called now, will be the subject of some doctoral thesis in the future), has reached an unusual point and has made evident the degree of gregariousness we all carry with us. I hope the country's sociologists and anthropologists take this seriously and explain the mechanisms of this episode to us well. Not even the Spanish victory in the Football World Cup has fueled a phenomenon of these dimensions, at least in this country.2. As could be foreseen (and no expertise was needed), public transport, mainly Rodalies and the sinister society formed by Adif and Renfe, failed spectacularly. Everyone (or almost everyone) knew it, but people rushed to the stations, onto the trains heading south, on the morning of the eclipse. Surprising. Were any of the users trapped in that black hole unaware of the disaster they were about to experience? Years and years of mistreatment, shameful operation, lamentable services, institutional mockery, etc., are useless? Only to complain and lament that in Tarragona, on the way back, the disaster was consummated? What is wrong with the people of this country, with the regular users of Rodalies? And with those who are not so regular? I don't understand. Expecting Rodalies to work is exactly the same as wanting to see a solar eclipse in the middle of a snowstorm (when there were snowstorms).3. The country was already fumbling before the eclipse. Now it walks in the dark. We have descended one more step in the general erosion of public life. We have consumed the spectacle of the eclipse at sidereal speed and, when it became clear again, the country remained at the same point where TV3 left it before trying to abduct us with the spectacle. Climate change, droughts, and fires are in the usual place. The institutional eclipse is dragging on; pending files remain pending and full of dust; on top of the old ones, new ones are added. Suffocated by heat and stunned under an unforgiving sun, the invisible and silent Minister of Culture announces the possibility of throwing money into some national dance and theater companies, presumably public and well-paid. All this in a ministry that, like that of Linguistic Policy, is distinguished by its absolute discretion. They cost us money, but we must admit that they do not bother at all.

We have serious problems in Catalonia and Spain. And we have arrived where we are because we have not mobilized identified solutions. Planning problems does not solve them, but it creates hope for a solution; it changes the perception of them. Let's list the present problems:Housing: price and accessibility. Education: deterioration of quality and conflict with teachers. Commuter rail: poor service and unresolved management problems, excessive unionism and lack of investment. Environment and agriculture: climate change, fires, outdated food supply chain, excessive bureaucracy. Distribution of public funding between autonomous communities and the central government: insufficient resources for autonomous communities with the largest part of current expenditure. Judiciary: in conflict with the executive and legislative branches. For these problems there are solutions.Housing. Municipalities should be able to transfer land to autonomous communities for 30 years, with the possibility of purchase at the end of the transfer. A public-private company (50%) builds and rents. Public capital provides a 30-year loan at 3%. Private capital, an investment with a 5% indexed remuneration. An 80 m² or 100 m² dwelling built on land transferred by a municipality costs approximately €150,000. The annual costs of a property under these conditions would amount to €7,500: €1,250 for loan interest; €2,500 for capital repayment, and €3,750 for the private investor's dividend.The annual income of a low-to-middle income family, after deducting income tax, is €25,000. Housing costs should be less than 30% of income: €7,500/year. It fits. This is the solution adopted in Austria – 100 years ago – and in the Netherlands – 40 years ago.Education. Resolving the conflict requires management and direction, not bureaucratic practices. The problem is not money – there has been an increase in teacher remuneration – nor the reduction in teacher-student ratios, which have decreased. The problem is the management of schools and the improvement of teacher training: the scientific component must be increased to promote an increase in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) vocations. Today, these studies represent 18% of university students, when they should represent at least 21%, to maintain harmonious development with R&D policies and the modernization of the economy. And students decide what to study while they are in secondary school.In the 2024-2025 academic year, there were approximately 39,000 primary and early childhood teachers in Catalonia, and around 43,000 in secondary and post-compulsory education. After the agreed-upon reforms, this represents an annual expenditure of 5.9 billion euros, to which 2.2 billion must be added for subsidized education. The problem is not economic: there has never been so much money. The negotiation has been union-based and not professional. The authority of school principals is reduced while the selection and promotion of teachers becomes more rigid; the opposite of what is needed. Having teachers as civil servants, and discontented, is a mistake. We are harming ourselves on an issue that is our future. The strength of Catalonia, Spain, and Europe lies in its people, and not excelling in education has a high cost. We are seeing it.Rodalies. The service is bad. In Catalonia there are two networks, with two different gauges that facilitate disintegration: the UIC gauge – which, in communicating Catalonia with Spain and France, must be the responsibility of the central government – and the Iberian gauge. Only commuter and regional trains (and freight that will cease to run in the future) run on this second network. There is an investment deficit of 15,000 millions of euros in this network over 40 years. If we add the new coast line – the current one is precarious – and the garages and workshops, the necessary investment is 20 billion euros. An expense of 2 billion euros over ten years is affordable.Renfe and Adif must be eliminated from Commuter and regional services. They are public companies of the central government, controlled by a corporate union, and in which the maintenance of union power will always be superior to the improvement of the service. This has been seen in recent months. This union, which defends its interests to the detriment of citizens', has fewer than 1,000 members in Catalonia. Overcoming this resistance to establish a new company to manage regional and commuter trains is feasible, despite union opposition. It is better to hire new staff than to "convert" the current ones. Those who do not wish to can stay at Renfe and Adif.An easy and urgent initiative is a train traffic information service that reaches users' mobile phones and allows them to know, in real time, the actual train schedules for that day. It would save thousands of hours for citizens and reduce the annoyance of not knowing when trains will arrive at stations. With current technology, the cost is practically nil.Environment and farming. We need a change in food production to improve efficiency and reduce the impact on the environment. We must increase plant production over animal production, which consumes more water and pollutes more. Eating habits cannot be changed suddenly, but they can be changed progressively with a 20-year policy.Financing. The new financing plan for the Autonomous Communities, pending approval, involves a transfer of €21,000 million per year from the central government to the communities. It is not enough, but it is a step in the right direction. If we don't do it, it will be for reasons of "narrow path" policy.Judiciary. There are more than 5,000 judges in Spain. How is it possible that there are almost no sanctions for inappropriate conduct? Although the majority are competent and carry out their activities professionally, it is not possible for everyone to always do everything well in a group of this size. A reform of the system is necessary, which, today, is politically impossible.I will leave for another article the issue of healthcare – a high-quality but overloaded and unsustainable service, a future problem that needs to be addressed now – and tourism – excessive concentration in peak months, need to reorient the offer towards less quantity and higher quality–. For the rest, it is clear that in many areas – not all – what needs to be done can be done. Politics must serve to solve problems, not to argue. Voters must be clear about this.

Beyond the traffic problems inherent in the railway network, last year it became clear that moving on foot, with reduced mobility, a stroller, or a wheelchair through Rodalies stations was often an insurmountable obstacle course. In March 2025, more than half of the elevators (52%) and almost half of the escalators at Rodalies stations were not working. "The situation was absolutely unsustainable, undesirable, and inadmissible," assures the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque. According to the Government, Renfe, and Adif, this situation of "neglect" has now been reversed.

A new scare related to railway works has caused the precautionary evacuation of about eighty residents of Trinitat Vella, in Barcelona, as reported by La Vanguardia and confirmed by ARA. According to municipal sources, shortly after 3:30 AM this morning, residents of three buildings located at numbers 75-103 of Pérez del Pulgar street, near the area of the collapse in Montcada i Reixac a few days ago, called 112 after noticing vibrations and movements in the buildings. "Everything was moving as if it were a small earthquake. It wasn't a simple vibration," explains Beni, one of the affected residents, who assures that the episode generated concern among the residents.

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).

The historic spokesperson for Renfe in Catalonia, Antonio Carmona, has been removed from his position in Rodalies. According to has advanced La Vanguardia and the company sources have confirmed to ARA, Carmona was dismissed a few weeks ago as director of institutional relations, from where he acted as an interlocutor with administrations and the media. Since then, according to the same sources, he has been in charge of new "functions in the commercial services" of the railway operator.

Lines R13, R14, R15, R16 and R17 of Rodalies are accumulating delays that may exceed 30 minutes since Monday morning due to a technical incident between Sitges and Garraf stations. The disruption originated from a train breakdown, which was stopped until passengers were transferred to another train. Once the transfer was completed, the train was able to resume service. In addition, Rodalies also reported an infrastructure incident on this same stretch. Although the forecast was to gradually recover schedules throughout the morning, the affected lines continue to not return to normal, and at 3 PM in the afternoon, delays of more than half an hour are still maintained.

The three lines affected by the collapse of the tracks this Wednesday in Montcada i Reixac are now running again. The R2, R2 Nord, and R11 have resumed service this Sunday morning between the stations of Sant Andreu and Montcada i Reixac, which had been stopped since the collapse of one of the shafts from the works to bury the tracks on the border between the two cities. Temporarily, a speed limit has been set on the affected stretch.

Three days after the collapse that on Wednesday swallowed a crane at the R2 line's underground works, Adif and Renfe have announced key steps to restore traffic on the affected tracks, but without yet specifying when the R2, R2 Nord, and R11 will return to normal operation. This Saturday at noon, Adif declared the sinkhole repaired after finishing filling the hole that opened on the border between Barcelona and Montcada i Reixac with concrete. Once all safety checks were completed, Renfe began conducting empty test runs, with empty trains, before restoring service.

A worker who was carrying out maintenance on the train tracks near Sant Mori (Alt Empordà) died early this Saturday morning. According to police sources, he suffered an electric shock while maintaining the railway line, halfway between the Sant Miquel de Fluvià and Camallera stations. At the latter, Adif has been carrying out works for some time. The victim is a 66-year-old man.

The Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, has presented the "first Railway Services Plan of Catalonia", which states it will organize and reorganize the railway system (and by extension, the mental health and family life of the beloved Antonio Carmona). I read that they will put on more trains, that they will double the kilometers of track, that they will rethink "the timetables, routes, and frequencies of Commuter, medium-distance, and high-speed trains", and that they want to implement "regular and repetitive timetables, easy for passengers to remember, along with the improvement and increase of frequencies throughout the network". And it all seems very good to us that they are moving forward. And that they put on trains, yes. However, that they want – as a plan – to implement repetitive and easy-to-remember timetables for passengers will keep me erotically charged from head to toe until I get my pink card.

Achieving the design of services "good for the whole territory" with the infrastructures we currently have – and those planned in the short term – and doubling the number of users: going from the current 455,000 daily travelers to one million passengers by 2040. This is the premise on which the Generalitat has been working for months and which it made public today with the presentation of the first Railway Services Plan of Catalonia, which should allow the critical situation of the Catalan railway network to be revived. This is how the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, and the Secretary of Mobility and Infrastructures, Manel Nadal, explained it this Tuesday afternoon. "They always tell us that the most orthodox thing would be to design the services first and then the infrastructures; well, we have done it," said Nadal.

With that gift of opportunity that has always characterized him, Adif has made an offering to the Holy Father of a gift that allows him to grasp the reality of Catalan land as soon as he steps off the plane. Exactly at the same time that Leo XIV was landing at El Prat airport, an incident at Adif's Traffic Control Center in Barcelona left the entire country without commuter trains: R1, R2, R3, R4, R8, R11, R14, R15, R16, R17, RG1, RL3, RL4, RT1, RT2. The service was interrupted for more than half an hour, until it was gradually recovered. And it fell again. Your Holiness, welcome to Catalonia.

Catalonia's railway network was briefly paralyzed on Tuesday on two occasions. While at midday trains in the Barcelona area were suspended for half an hour due to an incident at the Traffic Control Center (CCT) at Estació de França, Adif reported that traffic was interrupted again three hours later, at 3:30 PM, this time affecting all of Catalonia. The stoppages would be attributed to the IT management of the CCT by the company Siemens. Although both incidents were brief and technical teams were able to restore service a few minutes after publicly reporting the general breakdown, delays are expected to persist throughout the day. In response to these errors, both Adif and Rodalies have announced that they will initiate "legal action against Siemens".

One cold and one hot at the works that Adif has underway on the Catalan road network. The work on the Garraf railway tunnels has finished a week earlier than planned and will be able to reopen next Monday the 8th. On the other hand, the infrastructure manager has reported that the R3 works are being extended again: the first phase, which was due to open last May, will not be completed until the end of the year.

"Oh, it's difficult to say when the works will begin. It's a complex, very important and strategic line for the country. The urban planning part has been done since 2010 and now we will have to start with studies and projects. It won't be tomorrow; these infrastructures cost". These are statements by the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, to Catalunya Ràdio about the macro-project that has been decisive to unblock the approval of the budgets: the orbital railway line. ERC wants to reactivate a plan that has been in a drawer for twenty years to give its "yes" to the accounts. In fact, the Republicans present it as a future bet for a network that this year has experienced an unprecedented crisis and is still trying to recover some semblance of normality.

One of the mantras ERC resorts to in defining its relationship with the PSC is that of "gaining sovereignty". The Republicans explain that their agreements are based on achieving more resources, competences, and decision-making capacity for Catalonia. Have they achieved this? For now, through republican and socialist pushes and pulls, they have been unblocking some of the files agreed upon in the investitures of Salvador Illa (2024) and Pedro Sánchez (2023). However, they have found the solution in a mixed formula: establishing companies jointly owned by the Generalitat and the State, where the state administration has a majority.