This stupid crisis is not over

Many people, especially politicians, assume that the country is recovering from the crisis. But they don’t know that streets explain another reality.

A man collects food from a local NGO in Barcelona as part of the social program for migrants and people at risk of social exclusion. Photo by Albert Gonzalez Farran, CCAR

Although macro-economic figures are the main argument for those who believe that we are recovering, it is obvious that walking on the streets in Barcelona or any other Spanish city tell us a very different story.

Poverty has reached a point where it became a normal fact. We are getting too used to see people sleeping in cash machines or public parks; young and old searching bins to see what to get; migrants who are unfairly accused of plundering our dying welfare state; and even small shopkeepers who beg their own customers for help. The picture is devastating.

We have reached a dynamic in which those with money no longer see those without. And those without live with a painful resignation. In the meantime, those who have turned our society into a market, assure that this stupid crisis is over.