The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has estimated that the cost of the theft of copper cables this Sunday in Montcada Bifurcació (Barcelona) will be 15 million euros and it will take about two months to restore normality to the network. by Rodalies. Furthermore, the minister explained that the Government will report the facts to the court this Tuesday to “clarify who is behind it.”
At the press conference called this Monday, Puente regretted that the incident caused “an alteration of the most important democratic event, the day of a vote.”
On the other hand, the minister has indicated that the incidents in the train service in Catalonia are “abnormally high.” In the last five years there have been 11,151 incidents “affecting traffic safety,” Puente stressed. More than half of these damages to the Spanish railway network have occurred in Catalonia and another third in the metropolitan area.
In response, the minister stated that this situation “will not be solved with the transfer of Rodalies” and has reiterated that acts of vandalism are the responsibility of the police. “I am not going to assess whether the Mossos are doing their job well or not, I understand that they are doing the best possible. But I do say that if the Catalan police have no responsibility for the matter, Renfe and Adif even less so.”
“I do not affirm that there is sabotage, but I cannot rule it out,” added the minister, who was surprised that on Sunday “the Mossos, without having entered the tunnels, already had their conclusion and ruled out sabotage.”
Next, Puente lamented that beyond the value of the stolen material, the damage and the repair time, “the most serious thing” is the consequence that the event will have “on people.” Furthermore, the minister explained that the value of the stolen material, forty meters of copper cable, is “negligible if the intention is to sell it.”
In this sense, Puente added that the stolen material was in a very difficult access point, so the perpetrators of the act “risked their lives” to remove material of little value on the black market.
