Rodalies train strike 'not noticed' by commuters

Catalonia's public transport system has seen another strike this Wednesday as train drivers protested. 

Services during rush hour were reduced to a minimum of 66%, but train users admitted "not noticing the difference."

Oriol Baró commuted from Vilassar de Mar, a coastal city at the north of Barcelona, to the Catalan capital, and told the Catalan News Agency that the strike "has not altered his day."

Most users did not know about the drivers' strike action, and said that the day was like "any other day commuting by train." 

Yasmina Bentri, a user of the R3 line, criticized the conditions in which commuters have to travel every day, and pointed out that "whether there is a strike or not, I have to come two or three hours earlier." 

Last May, the R2 commuter train line suffered disruptions for weeks, and according to a report from Catalan news outlet El Periódico, in 2022 at least one serious incident occurred in at least one point of the rail network four out of every five days. 

The strike was organized by the union CGT due to the lack of staff members among the workforce, which they describe as "one of the greatest challenges the railway sector faces." 

CGT has also announced that the strike that began on Wednesday is the first of many that the union is planning during the year as they protest against the privatization of Renfe and ask for the reduction of the working week to 35 hours. 

This strike comes on the same day that Barcelona's Metropolitan Transport Authorities (ATM) announced that the public transport of the city and its metropolitan area registered historic high levels of demand during the month of June, with 92 million commuters.