On April 30, the extension of the exploitation of the ski area and the fun park of Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC) (FGC) in Vall de Núria ends. As of May 1, the public company assures that it will leave its management.
The Queralbs City Council and the company do not agree on the conditions of the new concession and its president, Antoni Segarra, assures that he is not "optimistic at all." For FGC, the council's conditions are "unacceptable", since "the City Council reserves the right to unilaterally reduce the concession by half and keep FGC's assets."
The mayor of Queralbs, Imma Constans, wants a "paradigm change" in the concession: "Until now they did not have to give explanations or reach a consensus with the City Council."
FGC has been in charge of the exploitation of the ski area on communal land and the Vall de Núria leisure park since 1985. In 2017 the existing concession ended and, since then, they have been making short extensions of a maximum of two years. The last one ends this April and the objective of both parties - Queralbs City Council and FGC - was to make a new concession.
The president of FGC, Antoni Segarra, assures that three months ago they reached an agreement in principle with the council in which they established a contract duration of 20 years, an investment of 6.2 million in the next six years, a fee of 10,000 euros per year and co-governance, among others.
Segarra criticizes that, despite having reached an agreement in principle verbally, after a few weeks the Queralbs City Council said that it wanted to set new conditions. "These are conditions that we had never talked about in the last two years, such as multiplying the fee by 2.5 and going from 10,000 euros per year to 25,000." However, Segarra highlights that there are two issues that are "red lines" for them.
In this sense, he assures that the City Council with the new proposal "reserves the right to reduce the concession in half unilaterally if at any time the committed investment is not made and, furthermore, once this concession is exhausted it has no obligation to pay for the remaining assets. This, Sagarra believes, "is not acceptable" and, furthermore, "presents legal problems that no department would accept."
In fact, the president of FGC is very forceful and says that right now they are "forced" to stop managing the ski part of Vall de Núria and also the recreational part and to "close the facilities until there is an agreement" .
In this sense, he is pessimistic because he assures that he does not see "a willingness to understand on the part of the Queralbs City Council." "On our part there will only be an agreement if we return to the concession agreed upon three months ago," he clarifies.
For her part, the mayor of Queralbs, Imma Constans, believes that the conditions they propose are legally valid because her advisors have assured her so.
He emphasizes that the previous 90-year concession was on a "free and exclusive title", that is, that the company "did not pay any fee" - now they want to incorporate the payment of 25,000 euros - and they were the only exploiters. "They did not have to give explanations or reach a consensus with the City Council, they did what they thought was appropriate and that is the paradigm shift: we believe that we should be participants, give our opinion and say if we think it went well," he says.
Constans believes that FGC is the "natural partner" because it is the company that manages the rack railway - the only transport to access the sanctuary - while also having the concession of the Bishopric of the sanctuary and the hotel complex. "We are the small ones," he says, because they are a municipality of 200 inhabitants, but "the one that gives added value because it is the natural environment that surrounds the sanctuary."
For this reason, he defends that the residents of Queralbs must be able to be "direct participants in what is done and not done in the valley" with the representatives they choose in the municipal elections.
The mayor wants the list of clauses to include a monitoring commission where the City Council will have a voice and for the company to prepare a study in the coming years on the future challenges of the valley.
Among the points defended by the City Council is also the possibility of reducing the concession by half in the event that the company does not comply with the agreed investments, the red line that FGC does not accept.
"We don't believe it has to happen" and assures that they will be flexible in case of exceptional situations that prevent it. But they believe it is necessary to incorporate it to be able to "have some strength to say that he had kept this," says Constans,
The mayor, who governs with an absolute majority in her fourth consecutive term with the acronym Junts, has been working on this concession document for years with the previous FGC representatives.
He admits that now the situation is "castled" on both sides. That is why he asks the Generalitat, represented by FGC, to make "a country's commitment" to be able to "maintain the Núria valley as a point of attraction" and to agree to the agreement.
ERC councilor Francesc Coll asks Constans to "prioritize the interests of the municipality, leaving aside personal and partisan interests." "What is not understood is that the agreement was practically on the verge of closing and suddenly it has imposed conditions that FGC cannot accept as a public company," he says.
"We are especially concerned with FGC's announcement that they will leave Vall de Núria," because they see it as "very difficult" for a private company to be interested in this business if a new tender had to be held.
The other councilor in the opposition, Genís Coll (CP), has assured that he wanted to wait to meet with the mayor this Friday to be able to have all the information before making any assessment on the matter.
