The technical and investment effort of the Ministry of Transport and its public companies is beginning to yield strong results. The investment executed over the course of last year was 859 million euros, 35% more than in 2021, not including the settlement to Acesa for the compensation of the works carried out on the motorways before the end of tolls, which would raise the figure to an unreal 1,928 million without palpable effects for citizens on Catalan infrastructure.
Without the need to take this distorting element into account, the 859 million euros executed are a little more than 40% of what had been budgeted and make Catalonia the autonomous community with the most executed investment in Spain, 26% above the second region, although in the previous year it was in third position. “It is disappointing to see how the story of a sleazy and victimizing Catalonia continues to be reproduced that does not correspond to reality”, lamented yesterday the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, during the Night of the Infrastructures, held at the headquarters of Foment of Work
The minister boasts that this is the highest figure since 2012, when precisely the investment that had been left on track by the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and that sank to minimum levels with Mariano Rajoy in Moncloa began to decline. The sector’s fear is that the same situation will repeat itself now that the trend continues to rise with the government of Pedro Sánchez.
Almost half of these 859 million correspond to works of the Neighborhood plan. There are so many at various points at the same time that they are precisely responsible for a significant part of the delays in the rail network lately. With a live investment of 3,941 million, the road and rail accesses to the port will soon be added to the works underway, the basic project of which was approved this week after a long work by all the parties involved since 2020
“We don’t need extraordinary summits, what we have to do is talk and work”, said the minister in front of the newly appointed Minister of Territory, Ester Capella, to whom she extended her hand “with the utmost demand for rigor in the “evolution of the proposals that we all discuss together”.
The first public meeting between the new councilor and the minister was very cordial, as was the deputy mayor of Urbanism, Janet Sanz, in what was probably her last act in office. On the stage of the employers’ association led by Josep Sánchez Llibre, who has questioned many of his projects, he called for a consensus “to face negationism” and imbue all administrations with a new civic culture.
