Complaints about commuter trains are skyrocketing: in two months they add up to more than in the entire last year.

BarcelonaMonths to receive a social benefit, years of waiting for a place in a public nursing home, or discontent over poor service. The slowness in responding to citizens is due to the fact that the Catalan administration is "slow, complicated, excessively bureaucratic, and obsolete in some cases." These are the words of the ombudsman, Esther Giménez-Salinas, who presented the institution's annual report to the Speaker of the Parliament, Josep Rull, in which she warns that complaints are growing at a very rapid rate. Largely responsible for this trend is the daily chaos of the Cercanías (Commuter Trains): if last year there were 160 complaints about the poor functioning of the trains, in the two and a half months of 2025 there have already been 397, more than double.

The document concludes that the administration's "inefficiency" "generates institutional distrust, affects the welfare state, and hinders social mobility." It calls for adapting public services to a population of more than eight million, reducing bureaucracy, and streamlining responses to citizens. In 2024, the Office of the Comptroller initiated 22,825 actions, including complaints, inquiries, and ex officio actions. The number of complaints rose to 11,214, as did ex officio actions, which reached 221. In contrast, inquiries remained stable at around 11,000.

The main complaints focused on social policies (43%), followed by public administration and taxes (22%), territorial policies (18.5%), consumer affairs (10%), citizen security and justice (6.1%), and culture and language (0.4%).

Waiting lists are growing

Among the problems detected, the increase in waiting lists in various areas of healthcare stands out. In October 2024, there were 9% more patients waiting for surgery and 18% more waiting for diagnostic tests. Social services were also affected in 2024: the waiting time to access a nursing home is 1.2 years and for people with disabilities, six years, which represents an increase in 2023 of 7% and 6.4% respectively.

A year and a half for social housing

Another problem is bureaucratic complexity, which forces citizens to submit the same documentation to different administrations, denounces the Catalan Ombudsman, who adds that unclear administrative language generates confusion and avoidable financial penalties. Regarding vulnerable groups, the report points to the lack of integration of aid such as the guaranteed citizen income and the minimum living income, which makes it difficult to serve vulnerable groups. "67 percent of ex officio actions affect the most vulnerable groups," Giménez-Salinas noted.

In this sense, the Ombudsman celebrated having reached more foreign-born people, with an increase in complaints from this group of 6.7% in 2023 and 9.4% in 2024.