The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, visited this Sunday the construction works of the B-40 motorway tunnel, between the municipalities of Olesa de Montserrat and Viladecavalls, in a show of commitment to the project as well as prevention. If the road is not built, it will not be due to a lack of will on your part. And it is that the future of the B-40 is more up in the air if possible despite the agreements signed for its construction as a result of the lack of understanding between the central government and the Generalitat. Both admit that the negotiations are totally aground, to the point that they have already entered a phase of sharing blame and reproaches.
Although the Government agreed to unravel the project in exchange for the support of the PSC for this year’s budgets, which it set as the deadline of March 31 to sign the agreement with the Ministry of Transport for its construction, the deadline has been exceeded and they have surfaced differences of importance between both parties.
Transport and the Department of Territory differ in practically everything regarding the B-40: in the road model -interurban road or dual carriageway-; in its financing -the Government does not want it to be in charge of the third additional provision-; in the coordination of the project -the Catalan Executive wants to exclude the Government-; even at the end of the layout that must be built, not to mention the negotiating attitude of one and the other through the exchange of various drafts and a couple of letters.
The differences have become evident this Monday, in an act in Barcelona in which the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, and the Minister of Territory Juli Fernà ndez participated. Both went to the Arc de Triomf station to present the remodeling works on the station platforms, and there they were asked about the B-40.
The minister used good words about a “necessary infrastructure” in which “we continue working” without taking into account deadlines such as the one set by the budget agreement. Sánchez was thus trying to free her ministry from the calendar, as well as the Government, and only slipped the need for her department to participate in the “technical monitoring” of the project. “On the part of the ministry, no problem”, she has come to say, but the subsequent intervention of Minister Fernà ndez, emphasizing the existing differences, made her “qualify” to respond to the complaints.
Fernà ndez referred to what in his opinion are “the terms” of the budget agreement with the PSC, which refer to the “Ronda Nord project between the urban systems of Terrassa, Sabadell and Castellar del Vallès”. In his opinion, this translates into “an interurban road” and “not a high capacity road” or “long distance”. In addition, the Minister has admitted that financing through the third additional provision, a fund created to cover the Government’s infrastructure investment deficit in Catalonia, “is not a real way to finance this infrastructure” but should be covered with “new financingâ€.
Given the explanations of the minister, the minister wanted to emphasize that it is the Government who reached an agreement with the PSC to unravel the project and that the Catalan Executive came to demand that “the ministry was not even there” in the coordination of the project, an exclusion which has been completely rejected by the Government. The minister has insisted on the need to sign the road construction agreement to later discuss the “details” within the scope of the technical commission, and has reiterated that the third additional is “the line to ensure its financing”, since these are resources to allocate to infrastructures.
The differences between the two parties are profound. In Transport they remember that they were the first to put a proposal on the table, that the Government did not move on the matter until March 1, despite the fact that the budget agreement with the PSC was signed on February 1, and that nor are they willing to renounce the coordination of the project, as the Government has demanded, nor to block the continuity of the road in the future. “They want it to end here -in reference to Sabadell- but the Vallès mobility plan is said to be analyzed for its continuity, therefore it does not deny its possible continuity, and we are not willing to mortgage the mobility of the area”, they assure in the Ministry.
A separate chapter deserves the reproaches to the Government for having “filtered” the differences in this matter. After the newspaper ‘Ara’ brought these discrepancies to light, the ministry warns that “it is they -in reference to the Government- who have breached” two agreements, one on budgets with the PSC and two, on the confidentiality of the conversations. And “when you filter you are putting red lines”, they warn, thus questioning the real will of the Government to unblock the works.
It escapes no one that this clash is taking place within the framework of an electoral context in which the PSC and ERC will start a tough fight in the metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona. Perhaps that is why in the Government they do not hide their lack of interest in unblocking the agreement. “For us, let it continue aground”, confess sources from the Catalan Executive.
