She gets off the bus to catch another, and a short train ride remains before she reaches her destination. From the UAB to Vilafranca, "it takes two and a half hours if everything goes well," Paula Pàmies replies resignedly as she heads home. A month earlier, the journey on the R4 and R8 lines, with a transfer in Martorell, took "an hour," and she admits to being "fed up with waiting and rushing for nothing."

Aside from large doses of anger, frustration, and resignation, the repeated disruptions to the commuter rail service in Catalonia have also led many users to develop strategies for surviving the experience of taking the train every day to and from work. Below, we've compiled some of the most notable:

Arc de Triomf, Catalunya, Clot, Premià, Prat, Granollers, Sabadell, Hospitalet... users of all these stations (and many others) have been publicly denouncing on social media for months that numerous elements of the facilities at their stops are out of order. Already in early February, The Vanguard He reported that at least seventy escalators and elevators in commuter rail stations across Catalonia are out of service, with no one apparently doing anything to remedy the situation. Until February, the company awarded the contract for this maintenance was Schindler.