Vandalism degrades Barcelona

The serious altercations that occurred this weekend at

Barcelona Mercè festivities exceed the usual security issues "typical of big cities", which is what Mayor

wanted to reduce yesterday to some 500 people looting shops, burning street furniture and vehicles, and star in pitched battles against the security forces.

The celebration, by the way, ended in tragedy with a fatality.

It is not simply a question

sporadic disturbance of public order.

These disturbances, which are beginning to be recurrent in the city and at festivals, have a much more entrenched origin and, unfortunately, are difficult to combat: they are the result of the political, economic and social degradation that the rulers of the Generalitat and the Barcelona City Council itself with its tolerance and promotion of illegality, its kidnapping of public space, its attacks on private property and the legitimization of street violence as an element of pressure.

They are, finally, the penultimate transfer to the society of

of democracy in Catalonia.

The altercations and vandalism occurred in different areas of Barcelona, ​​which shows the existing lack of control.

The stores woke up with their windows smashed and the merchants lamented not only the material losses but also the perennial feeling of abandonment.

They have been complaining for years and demanding measures from the City Council to tackle insecurity, but they have collided with Colau's childish and good-natured speech.

In the meantime,

: robberies of tourists, for example, are multiplying, and this stabbing in Mercè has caused the seventh violent death this week in the capital.

Nor is the Guardia Urbana silent.

He regrets that because of the authorities he has lost the basic principle of authority to carry out his role, which is none other than to protect the citizen -it is incredible that this has to be remembered-.

The security forces have been ignored in Catalonia.

According to convenience they have been presented as enemies or partners of political causes and society.

The body is weighed down by the lack of institutional support and, more seriously, by institutional attacks.

The bankruptcy of the rule of law in Catalonia has given rise to

which has lasted for more than a decade.

It has affected the region's competitiveness, its tourist attraction and Barcelona's role as a major European city.

Coincidence or not, today we are at the gates of the fifth anniversary of 1-O, a date that must be remembered as a point of no return in this visible deterioration of Catalan society: from the crimes that led there to the acquittal of those political leaders who subverted the constitutional order.

The law, of course, continues to prevail in Catalonia.

It is not a community in chaos, but it is degraded.

And no one can be surprised, because the causes are very close in time: the legitimization by the ruling elites of

.

From those muds of the institutional discourse of the

, these mud.

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