Rodalies is on its way to becoming the other big issue on which the eventual support of the pro-independence parties for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as the next president of the Government will pivot. If the amnesty has been configured in the issue that summarizes the demands of Junts and Carles Puigdemont - also from ERC - to give that support to Sánchez, the comprehensive transfer of Rodalies seems to be the price that the Republicans attach. This is in response to the complaint that the Government made this Tuesday about the situation of the service in Catalonia and the announcement by President Pere Aragonès, this Wednesday, to promote in Parliament the holding of a monographic plenary session on Rodalies.
Aragonès announced this in the Government control session that took place in the Catalan Chamber, after the main parliamentary groups engaged in a discussion about responsibility for the poor state of public mobility in Catalonia. "We have had a problem in Rodalies for a long time and we must address this issue with all our might," the president justified.
The objective of the debate, according to Government sources, is to highlight "that the grievances related to the service of Rodalies and Regionales are intolerable", and to highlight the years of "non-compliance and disinvestment" by the Government, as well as the "accumulation of registered incidents and the daily negative consequences for hundreds of thousands of users.”
As the Government reported this Monday, the president also intends to put on the table the huge number of incidents, especially the fact that serious ones have increased by 60% in the last 10 years, as well as “the “deficiency in communication” of these incidents by the operator, Renfe.
In the document registered by Aragonès to request the full monograph, emphasis is placed on the "neglect" of the State Government due to the lack of investment in these infrastructures and "the repeated budgetary non-compliance of a structural nature that especially affects the citizens of Catalonia." . And he gives as an example the comparison with Madrid: "While in the Autonomous Community of Madrid the State executed 184% of the budget in 2021, in Catalonia it was only 35.8%" and "since 2015 the State has left to invest in Catalonia more than 2,000 million euros that were budgeted for Rodalies".
This Tuesday, the president registered the request for a monographic debate, where he hopes to be able to address the issue with “rigor” and with “the will to generate majorities” in favor of the transfer of the service.
But the majorities, for the moment, are conspicuous by their absence, at least that was evident in the Catalan Chamber minutes before the president's announcement, during the Government control session. PSC, Junts and ERC, in this case through the words of the Territori Councilor of the Government, Ester Capella, have thrown their weight behind them because of Rodalies and mobility. Especially bitter has been the dispute between the councilor and Junts, whom Capella has reproached for the poor results of their policy in Madrid, approving the General State Budgets on many occasions without having served to solve "a fake transfer of Rodalies" and “the historical lack of investment” in infrastructure.
Capella thus responded in response to the reproaches made by the Junts deputy Cristina Casol, who blamed the Government for the “chaos in Renfe and on the roads” as a consequence of the “failure of the Government's planning.” The deputy denounced the collapse of high-capacity roads and that there are "roads that do not see the light, like the Ronda Nord", despite the commitment of the Catalan Executive.
The councilor agreed that Rodalies is currently “an indecency”, but held the State Government and the successive convergent governments responsible: “Do you want me to remind you how many years they have been governing this country and have had responsibility for the country's mobility?” ? You may have something to do with part of the infrastructure disaster,” she concluded. Capella thus demanded that Junts join together in a common front to demand the transfer of Rodalies against which the PSC is increasingly alone, especially after En Comú Podem has placed the issue as one of the aspects to be negotiated in the face of to the investiture between Yolanda Díaz, the leader of Sumar, and Sánchez.
The socialists tried to defend the role of the central government regarding Rodalies against the attacks of the Government. In the PSC they have taken two ideas as arguments: on the one hand, the defense of investments in infrastructure by the State, in the face of decades of neglect on the part of the PP governments, and on the other, questioning that the transfer of the Rodalies a Catalunya's management will improve the efficiency of the service.
That is why the socialist deputy Jordi Terradas elaborated on these two ideas when denouncing the deficiencies that other mobility systems that depend entirely on the Government of the Generalitat, such as the exprés.cat interurban buses, also suffer.
Terradas regretted that last week, between 900 and 1,000 users of these buses who wanted to travel between Vilafranca and Barcelona were left stranded, unable to catch the bus, and that expeditions are constantly canceled, stops are skipped, there are breakdowns, lack of information , etc. “It must be that Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat does not work so well,” alleged the PSC deputy. Capella justified the saturation of this interurban service due to the deficiencies in Rodalies and demanded payment of the investment deficit in Catalonia, the approval of a new financing system and that the Government "execute 100% of the budget."
