The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has opened the door for the Government to transfer Cercanías services to other autonomous communities in addition to Catalonia. He said it this Friday within the framework of the III Sustainable Mobility Conference organized at the Palau Robert in Barcelona by Eldiario.es.
Puente explained that the Government is “willing to dialogue” with all those autonomous communities that may be interested in the transfer of this service. In statements to the press, Puente recalled that this Thursday the president of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, demanded the transfer and wondered if “it is a kind of counterprogramming to Mr. Feijóo.”
“Of course, if Spain breaks up by ceding the surrounding areas to Catalonia, I don’t know if it will break up a little more if we cede them to Andalusia, well maybe it doesn’t break up, maybe it is part of a decentralized management of the country,” he insisted.
During his speech during the day, Puente ruled out putting a timetable for the transfer of Rodalies de Catalunya, and said that “there has been an unnecessary alarm in the staff” of Renfe, since he has assured that labor rights will be maintained.
The minister stressed that the construction of both the Mediterranean Corridor and the Atlantic Corridor are underway and are operations “unrelated to the budgetary situation” because they are financed by Europe.
He regretted that Spain is a “clearly unacceptable exception” in the European Union in the transport of goods by train and has guaranteed that with these corridors 10% of the total will be reached. Puente has stressed that increasing the percentage of goods transported by train will allow us to gain competitiveness, since it is cheaper than transporting it by road.
Regarding Spanish cities that are taking steps back in sustainable transport infrastructure or in low-emission zones, he recalled that in the short term they will have to return the European aid they received to build them.
In the medium and long term, he said that the Ministry plans to continue financing part of public transport in the future and that it will be done “with sustainability criteria.” “What we cannot do is apply purely population criteria regardless of the public transport policies that are developed in urban areas,” she pointed out.
Regarding the complaints of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, for not being invited to the inauguration of the High Speed ??section between Asturias and León, Puente has said that it is part of the strategy of “victimhood and clear confrontation with government”.
He has lamented that the Madrid president “takes things to an absurd extreme” and that it is, literally, an invented grievance, since she has never been invited to inaugurations of railway sections that had nothing to do with Madrid. She has said that it is a “completely artificial confrontation that has been invented to continue fueling her victimhood” and that, in her words, she has made a fool of herself.