First it was in the Senate, then in Congress and now in Parliament. The Minister for Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, has been failed for the third time, this time in the Catalan Chamber, at the initiative of ERC. The minister received parliamentary censure with the votes of ERC, Junts, the CUP and PP (71 in total); the votes against PSC, Ciudadanos and a non-attached deputy (38), and the abstention of En Comú Podem and Vox (17).
The motion was one more initiative by the Republicans as a result of the serious incidence of Rodalies in the Gavà station (Baix Llobregat) that turned the service upside down for a few days last May and affected the R2 Sud line for a couple of of weeks. The incidence reached the gates of the electoral campaign of the municipal elections last Sunday and ERC emphasized the shortcomings of Rodalies to fuel its electoral struggle with the PSC in the so-called red belt of Barcelona.
The ERC parliamentary initiative, negotiated with Junts per Catalunya, therefore ended with the support of the pro-independence parties and the PP. In it, the minister is condemned for “the constant inefficiency in the management of the Renfe and Adif service in Catalonia”, as well as for “the inability to adopt measures to deal with the incidents and daily impact on the quality of the service and the mobility of travelers.
The motion also calls for the creation of a commission of investigation on the Rodalies service whose objectives are to assess the economic and social costs caused by the deficiencies of this service, and calls for the full transfer of the service, the transfer of ownership of the infrastructures and the transfer of resources for the proper management of all powers.
The Socialists have been practically alone in defending the management of the central government in Rodalies. The PSC deputy, Jordi Terradas, claimed that no other government like Pedro Sánchez’s has invested more in the service and blamed the current deficiencies on the years of disinvestment accumulated by successive PP governments.
Terradas’s arguments did not convince ERC. The deputy Ferran Estruch verified “the reality that Rodalies works very badly” for two reasons, one “chronic underfinancing”, and two, “the mismanagement of the different governments, the PP and the PSOE”. The parliamentarian denounced that the Investment defaults in Rodalies have been dragging on for 30 years but in the last 12 years “they add up to almost 12,000 million euros without investing” and this c.
The Republican also pointed out that last year there were a total of 284 serious incidents, so that “four out of every five days there was a serious incident,” he lamented. These are incidents that each cause more than 100 minutes of delay. “He is outrageous and should make those who manage him fall with shame,” he denounced.
For his part, Junts deputy Ramon Tremosa regretted that the situation in Rodalies means that Catalans, “whatever they thinkâ€, are treated as “fourth-category Spaniardsâ€. Tremosa highlighted the grievance that, in his opinion, means that in the last 30 years, in Madrid, which represents 1% of the national territory, he remarked, 50% of all CercanÃas in Spain have been invested.
The parliamentarian regretted that the current government of PSOE and Unidas Podemos has not complied with the transfer of Rodalies and encouraged ERC, in view of the next general elections and the possibility of conditioning investitures, to “please, collect in advance ; do not give away more investitures or more budgets of good vibes. If Sánchez wants the investiture, before and not after, let this transfer of Rodalies be made â€, he advised.
The commons also criticized Minister Sánchez for a management at the head of the Ministry of Transport that in their opinion has not worked. But the spokesman David Cid did not attribute it so much to Rodalies, about which he stressed that the coalition government has invested more than any other, but to the fact that it has paid more attention to projects such as the expansion of El Prat airport or the fourth belt . Cid was in favor of the transfer of Rodalies and urged the Government of the Generalitat to change priorities, demanding that it not sign the agreement to carry out the B-40 until this transfer takes place.
Minister Sánchez thus receives the third parliamentary disapproval of her mandate after those of the Senate and Congress. In the Upper Chamber, on May 10, the plenary session endorsed an initiative in the same sense agreed between ERC, PP, Junts, and other left-wing formations, and the next day, in the Lower House, PP, Vox and usual partners of the Government such as ERC and PDECat, joined to condemn the minister for her management in housing matters and also in the railway field.
