The sentence of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) that obliges the Generalitat to pay more than 80 million euros to Renfe is clear, but the Government is not up to the task of satisfying the debt. The legal officials of the Department of Territory are considering presenting an appeal against the obligations recognized between 2016 and 2019 and make it clear that they do not intend to pay those of the subsequent years.
Councilor Ester Capella considers that “the Generalitat has the right to stand up” and not pay in response to the lack of compliance with railway investments by the Ministry of Transport. In an interview on the program Aquí Catalunya, in addition to claiming the complete transfer for the umpteenth time, he accused the central government of being “the main defaulter” in the matter, and confirmed that they do not plan to assume the cost of the plan ‘action agreed at the time with Rodalies neither this year nor the previous ones under discussion. The amount rises to 156 million euros from 2016 to 2022, at a rate of approximately 25 million per year.
For now, the debt that the administrative litigation room of the TSJC has recognized in favor of Renfe is 80.9 million, to which interest on delay must be added, in addition to the subsequent years not yet litigated. The money in question corresponds to the so-called “action plan”, with several improvements incorporated after the transfer in 2010 such as the extension of trains from Mataró to Arenys de Mar, the RG1 line that reaches Portbou, the first train to at El Prat airport and the Rodalies del Camp de Tarragona service. These are some of the improvements applied at the request of the Catalan government and, as it was established in the handover, it was the public administration that was to take charge of the expenditure.
The Generalitat had been paying for these services punctually since it assumed ownership of Rodalies until 2017, when, at the time of greatest tension between Moncloa and the Palau de la Generalitat, they took the political decision to stop doing so. The increase in fees charged by the railway infrastructure administrator (Adif) for each train that passes through the tracks was the justification they argued from the Territory to stop paying, since at that time these fees were increased worth up to nine million more each year. At this point, they decided that they would not pay the fees but also the costs associated with the service. First the Renfe technicians claimed it, then the political officials of the Ministry of Transport did it and, faced with the lack of response from the previous officials of the Department of Territory, the operator decided to take the case to court, which has given Renfe the right, starting from the agreement signed in the Mixed Commission for Economic and Fiscal Affairs (CMAEF) of 2009, in which it was made clear that it would be the Catalan government that would have to pay the increases in fees for the services agreed in at that time and of future additions.
The original sin that has led to this situation is the absence of a program contract between the Generalitat – as the owner of the service – and Renfe as the operator. The non-existence of this document that should mark the rules of the game prevents these issues from being debated between the two parties, as happens in the rest of the autonomous communities, in which the central government has taken charge of improvement plans in virtue of the program contract debated a thousand times but never made a reality in Catalonia.
