Top image: ‘Shame Counter’, Barcelona (2016) Photo by Josep Lago

Barcelona’s leftwing Mayor, Ada Colau, has unveiled a large, real-time digital counter next to one of the city’s popular beaches that will track the number of refugees who die in the Mediterranean ocean.

“We are inaugurating this shame counter which will update all known victims who drowned in the Mediterranean in real time,” Colau claimed at the unveiling, adding, “this isn’t just a number, these are people.”

Colau’s left-wing coalition won power in 2015, vowing to challenge financial corruption, unemployment and Barcelona’s housing crisis. Her rise to mayorship is part of a broader shift of la nueva politica, ‘the new politics’ currently sweeping across Spain.

This latest move is poignant reminder of the thousands of lives being cut short due as people seek refuge from their war-torn homes and comes only two days after UN world leaders failed to to reach an agreement on how to tackle the refugee crisis. 

“Faced with the worst refugee crisis in 70 years, world leaders have failed to bear the weight of responsibility,” said Charlotte Phillips, advisor on Refugee and Migrants’ Rights at Amnesty International.

At the time of writing, the number on the monument stands at 3,034.