"A person living on the street in Barcelona is exposed all day, surrounded by people, but no one sees them. It is the peak of loneliness," explains Núria Martínez, director of the Hort de la Vila center for homeless people, in the Sarrià neighborhood. In Catalonia, there have never been as many people sleeping on the streets as there are now: according to the Government, there are about 8,000, more than half of whom are in the country's capital. Working but being unable to pay rent and having to sleep outdoors is a growing reality, as the increase in precariousness means that there are more and more people who cannot even afford to pay for a room despite earning a salary. With this scenario, it is becoming increasingly complex to ensure they reintegrate socially and regain their autonomy, and experts warn that networks of affection and support are needed to allow them to break free from the unwanted loneliness they suffer, in addition to ending the lack of accessible housing and bureaucratic obstacles.

As a child, Mohammed Fadily met thousands of children like him, minors living in shelters after having crossed the border illegally to achieve a better life in Europe. Only about twenty of them made it. "Most have died sleeping on the street, are in prison, or have returned to Morocco." When he arrived by boat he was fifteen years old and, although some of his cousins were already living in Spain, none of them gave him a hand when he asked them for help. He did not speak Catalan or Spanish and the few familiar faces turned their backs on him. His family was miles away, he would not be able to visit them until he reached the age of majority. He was transferred from one center to another without being informed of anything. The only certainty he had was that he did not know anyone.

Little is said about unwanted loneliness. We have so many major social problems –housing, the education crisis, chronic poverty, mental health...– that unwanted loneliness, which is not very evident at first glance, does not generate alarm. But in the world we have built, it is a growing malaise: more and more people, of all social conditions and ages, from urban and rural environments, live the trauma of social isolation. Even people we would never imagine. It does not affect, as many think, only and above all the elderly. It also affects, and increasingly so, children, adolescents, and young people; and it also affects adults who apparently lead a conventional life. This harsh reality is well documented and known, but it does not receive enough attention, neither from the media nor from professional support. So it is not on the list of social priorities. Clearly, there is a lack of awareness of the seriousness it entails.

Issiaga Sylla was 19 years old when he arrived in Catalonia completely alone. He says he did not understand the culture, nor did he speak Catalan or Spanish, and he barely knew anyone here from his country. He is from Guinea Conakry. "I didn't interact with anyone," he confesses.

Three in the morning, a teenager can't stop thinking about a stranger's comment on social media. She'd like to ask her best friend for advice, but she doesn't want to wake her up. She picks up her phone and starts whispering. Eleven at night, another teenager is doing homework when a playground argument comes back to him, swirling around in his head. He trembles, he wants to text his best friend for advice, but he's embarrassed. And he also picks up his phone and starts whispering. Both opt for a synthetic confidant who will attend to them at odd hours and won't judge them. A confidant designed to generate emotional dependency. In two decades, the digital economy has undergone enormous evolution: it started with data, until with social media platforms we discovered that attention was the scarce resource to compete for. Today, with the irruption of chatbots, what they monetize is our need to connect. Emotional support is one of the three most common uses of chatbots, both for adolescents and for the adult population. And the reason is that they promise availability, immediacy, and constant validation, generating a sense of complicity from synthetic intimacy – otherwise known as the attachment economy.

In her mature diaries, Susan Sontag writes: "Solitude is infinite. A whole new world. A desert." Three short sentences that describe isolation as an extreme experience. This week, the San Juan de Dios charity launches its campaign against unwanted loneliness—this is the problem Mònica Bernabé addresses in an extensive report that you will find in theNow Sunday– with a commercial in which a man eats New Year's Eve grapes in front of the television, accompanied only by the sound of bells that become tragic, almost as if tolling for the dead. The image is a cliché that serves to illustrate the cruelty of a solitude without alternative. Although, well, it has the spirit of preparing for the New Year's Eve party and following the ritual of turning in the year. The solitude that hasn't been chosen is also a kind of temporal abyss, that desert Sontag speaks of, in which the calendar can be a torture because the days cease to have meaning because there's nothing left to celebrate.

Fernanda, 76 years old, is from the generation so as not to disturb. The kind who prefers to keep quiet, swallow, endure. All to avoid disturbing others, although this destroys her inside. She has three children but lives alone because, she says, one son lives in London, one daughter is in Madrid, and the one who lives in Hospitalet de Llobregat is content for her to work and take care of the children and the house, and the only thing missing is having to take care of her. And Fernanda doesn't want anything in the world to be a burden, even if she feels alone.