With the approach of the major festivals of Gràcia, Sants and later La Mercè, Barcelona City Council has called for citizens to behave with "civility and individual responsibility". Although complaints for anti-social behaviour remain at the same rate as other years, some phenomena such as the illegal street parties known as botellones seem to have become entrenched despite night venues reopening and the end of the covid-related restrictions that marked the last two summers. "Some situations are worrying," admitted the first deputy mayor for Security, Albert Batlle, after the control meeting on security and civility to assess the first week of August. On Tuesday 2, the increase in penalties for botellones came into force. This means fines for minor infringements will go from €60 to €100, while more serious complaints will increase from €100 to between €300 y €600. In just the six days the measure has been in force, 747 complaints have been filed, at an average of 124 per day.

"The solution? That all outdoor seating be closed at ten o'clock at night and then we'll sleep for sure". This is Isabel and Marta's verdict, sitting on a bench in the Jardins de la Mediterrània, large square in Marina neighbourhood of Barcelona, but which does not close at night and is home to bars, most with outdoor seating and one which opens till late. "There is always activity here... and, of course, noise", these neighbours sum up. In total, nine outdoor seating areas with about thirty tables. Arguments and fights often break out, and chairs are thrown. Sporadically objects are also thrown from windows towards the customers, some restaurateurs report.

Viruses permitting, after two years of the pandemic, this summer will again resemble 2019, the last before covid struck. Since Easter, the city has been full of tourists and even more are expected to come. Their increased presence is linked to a growth in crime, often with foreign visitors as recurring victims. Thefts and robberies, in fact, are already above 2020 numbers – when crimes bottomed out – and last year, but still below 2019, when they reached an all-time high and there was talk of a "security crisis" in the city. With this data, the Guardia Urbana and also the Mossos are preparing for a summer that will bring back some old problems, although not all: the presence of street sellers in Barcelona is at a minimum, according to data from the City Council.

A youngster inhales the air from a balloon for a few seconds and sits on the ground with a smile. He experiences "a tingling" feeling, a "shiver" and a sense of "well-being", he explains, which lasts for half a minute. The air inside the balloon is nitrous oxide, which is better known as laughing gas. It is not a new drug, because tourists who come to Catalonia, especially French and British, have been using it for years, also in Barcelona.

Whether it was because it was a Sunday, because the subway closed at midnight or because people were just too hungover, the fact is last night of La Mercè festival has been the quietest of all. The firework display put an end to a festival that will be remembered for the mass illegal parties, two of which were very eventful: the one on Friday night at the Plaça Espanya and the one on Saturday night at Bogatell beach. Yet Sunday night was a lot calmer.

Like energy, which does not disappear, but is transformed: with the Plaça Espanya in Barcelona armored by the police to prevent a repetition of the street drinking parties of the last two nights, young people who wanted to take advantage of another weekend night to party on the street changed their scenario. Yesterday, calls for different parties were already circulating on the networks: the most crowded was on the Bogatell beach and its surroundings, a space that is already the usual place for this type of gathering in the city, which yesterday was overwhelmed by the size of the gathering and by the destruction of premises.

More than 40,000 people - according to the Guardia Urbana - joined yesterday's street drinking party in Barcelona during the second night of La Mercè festivities, which ended with a score of detainees and dozens of injured, thirteen of them stabbed.

A piece of a bus shelter fell into the fountains on Avinguda Maria Cristina. Broken glass all over the Palau de Congressos and, even so, the mass vaccination point is still active. Car number plates broken among the glass. These are just some of the traces of the lack of control of a mass street drinking party in Plaça Espanya in Barcelona and its surroundings which, tonight, the second night of La Mercè, brought together up to 40,000 people. A leap in scale compared to the 15,000 on the first night. And a leap in scale, too, with respect to the riots. The gathering resulted in 20 arrests and 43 injured, three of them seriously and 13 with stab wounds. Shops on Carrer Creu Coberta were vandalised and robbed.

Thousands of young people in Plaça Espanya. A full-fledged 'macrobotellón' (mass street-drinking party) that makes a joke out of the one that took place a few weeks ago in the Parc de l'Espanya Industrial. A multitudinous call as a starting signal for La Mercè festivities. The recommendations of the City Council and the health services not to go to the street party, not to gather in large groups of people, to rationalise social interaction, have been of no use. The response of Barcelona's young people is clear: they want to party and this is more powerful than all the recommendations in the world. The image is shocking. Not a needle can fit at the foot of the Torres Venecianes, at the beginning of Avinguda Maria Cristina and all around the first pavilions of the Fira. The entire perimeter of the square, including the central garden area, has been colonised. The feeling is that the whole of Barcelona (and the Barcelona beltway) between fifteen and twenty-five years old is here. La Mercè concerts at the Olympic Stadium and the Teatre Grec have had an effect, and the call to action on the social networks (especially Instagram) has done the job.

Barcelona's end-of-summer festival, La Mercè, appears as a new litmus test on the way out of the pandemic. As we have seen lately, there have been obstacles: uncontrolled outdoor parties, known as botellones, have proliferated as bars and clubs have remained closed. Restrictions on nightlife will be eased on Thursday for premises which have outdoor spaces, which are very few. Therefore, the possibility of mass botellones remains, with the resulting public order problems (noise, damage to furniture, dirt, homophobic violence...) and danger of contagion. In this final stretch of summer and the beginning of autumn, the sustained advance of vaccination (by the way, what a disaster that 70,000 doses have expired: on the one hand, there must have been some kind of lack of foresight, and on the other, irresponsibility among youngsters) has created a partly false feeling that the virus has been defeated. Covid is in retreat, but it is still there, even if it can't do as much damage. But we are a long way from no longer needing to worry.

The Catalan Government has decided to allow bars and nightclubs to reopen until 3.00 am, while restaurants will be allowed to close at 1 am. This comes after in the past few days, a growing number of officials had spoken in favour of reopening clubs, as a tool to curb the proliferation of illegal parties known as botellones. This weekend's alcohol-fuelled macro-gatherings at the UAB or in Tiana had reopened the debate at a key moment, only a week before Barcelona holds La Mercè festival in Barcelona.

Around 8,000 people have concentrated this Friday night and during the early hours of Saturday morning in a street drinking party on the campus of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, in Cerdanyola del Vallès. The call ran through social networks and spoke of a party at the Faculty of Engineering, but when the young people arrived they saw that there was no music or DJ's and that the party did not exist. Even so, they have celebrated a party with music and alcohol that has lasted until the early hours of the morning.