The current malaise of democracy admits no euphemisms. The institutions that uphold it have lost the trust of the majority of citizens they are supposed to represent. The data, accumulated survey after survey, depict an erosion that is not conjunctural but structural, and which connects with the crisis of the liberal democratic model throughout the West, but which in Spain adopts its own and particularly worrying forms.

Illegal street vending, drugs on public streets, and skyrocketing filth. This is what many residents and shopkeepers in Barcelona's Sant Antoni neighborhood have been experiencing for months. "We've reached the limit: either we report it now or it will get worse. We want a political reaction," say Sant Antoni Encants, one of the neighborhood associations that issued a letter on Monday to the Eixample and Ciutat Vella city councils to express their discontent over the "deterioration it is suffering." In it, they detail that the increase in uncivil behavior affects neighborhood coexistence and, in turn, has a direct impact on local businesses.