The war between Esquerra and Junts reaches the transfer of Rodalies

The Rodalies trains slipped into the last debate on general policy in the Parlament and also in the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies this week on account of the comparative grievance of investment in Catalonia with respect to other communities.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
15 October 2022 Saturday 21:30
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The war between Esquerra and Junts reaches the transfer of Rodalies

The Rodalies trains slipped into the last debate on general policy in the Parlament and also in the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies this week on account of the comparative grievance of investment in Catalonia with respect to other communities.

The negotiations for the transfer of Rodalies have been on the table for more than a year in the talks that Catalonia has with the Government and in this time it has become one of the main demands of the Government. To the point that this historic demand had come to provoke an underground war between the watertight departments of ERC and Junts within the coalition Executive that broke up a week ago. One more battle between the partners to capitalize and claim the result of these negotiations.

The talks, discreet and at a more technical than political level, were well advanced. In the offices of New Ministries they do not remember bridges built so easily with the Catalan Executive since the time when Santi Vila coincided on one side and Ana Pastor on the other. In this case, the understanding has been between managers of lower rank, but with decision-making power.

The ambitious ideas of full transfer of the postconvergents took shape in the last bilateral infrastructure commission. There, a document was placed on the table in which the Generalitat detailed a transfer proposal until 2030 with a transitory calendar, so that the trains and the line personnel were progressively transferred from Renfe to Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (FGC) while the ministry financed the purchase of the new committed convoys and an agreement with the Railway Infrastructure Administrator (Adif) guaranteed the maintenance and new investments already committed in the Rodalies 2020-2030 plan.

The proposal was significant, but there was no mention of it in the subsequent public appearances, and the Republicans did not even know about it. In ERC they maintain that "this proposal has never reached the table of President Aragonès" and that it is a document articulated from the Conselleria de Territori. Presidency sources even deny that the detailed transfer report has been discussed in any of the negotiating frameworks with the central government.

Be that as it may, in Transport they completely reject a transfer of these characteristics in the short term, although the PSC has given some support to the movement in Parliament. The Socialists presented in the general policy debate a resolution proposal in which they referred to the economic transfer, as they had been repeating for active and passive until then, but they also opened the door to the transfer of ownership of some infrastructures, a scenario never raised until now.

The step forward of the Socialists adds even more confusion to a polysemic problem when it comes to the transfer of Rodalies. Although they all use the same concept, the Government and the Generalitat talk about very different things and each party understands what interests them. In the Consellería de Territori, during the last years they have only wanted to talk about a complete transfer that completes the current one and includes the trains, the tracks, the catenaries and the stations.

Nothing to do with what the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, has in mind when she mentions the transfer. In her case, she refers purely to the economic transfer of the operating deficit of Rodalies. In other words, the cost of the service paid each year from the ministry to Renfe would go to the Generalitat as the owner of the service, which in turn would subsequently have to pay Renfe, which would continue to provide the service. The number of games would be the same, but the Government could hold a new competition, even if it is inconsequential in the day-to-day life of Rodalies users.

While changing hands the management of tracks or trains is a major challenge, the economic transfer is an easy matter. However, the Government links it directly to another aspect that arouses great misgivings in the Generalitat: the signing of the program contract between Renfe and the Generalitat. This is the document that establishes the conditions of the relationship between the incumbent administration and the operating company, and the amortization of investments in the medium term. During recent years, both Renfe and the Generalitat have been kicking forward and the service has continued to function, with its pluses and minuses, but the purchase of a hundred trains formalized by the state operator to renew the fleet changes the scenario . Both the president of Renfe, Isaías Táboas, and Minister Sánchez have made it clear that there will not be a single new train if there is not a program contract that provides continuity.

The document has been pending since 2010, when the powers were transferred to the Generalitat by virtue of the provisions of the Statute. Throughout this time, the Government has been signing the respective program contracts with FGC, but successive ministers have been slow to do the same with Renfe. Despite the fact that the technicians have drafted proposals with hair and signs on several occasions, the politicians have always stopped it. Josep Rull, Damià Calvet and Jordi Puigneró avoided going down in history as the ministers who sealed the continuity of Renfe in Catalonia, an operator that they have always attacked and opposed with FGC, an operator exhibited as punctual and exemplary, although in recent months problems have accumulated. Now the negotiations will fall to the new Minister of Territory, Juli Fernández.