The discomfort in the governments of Cantabria and Asturias with the error when designing the metric gauge trains committed by Renfe has forced the Government to make decisions that can compensate for the delay of at least two years, assumed this Monday by the Government in form of the resignations of the Secretary of State for Transport and the president of Renfe, in the delivery of the convoys. Several options were on the table and the ministry has decided to execute a clause in the contract to extend the delivery to seven more vehicles.
The first decision taken by the department directed by Raquel Sánchez has been to assume the execution of the contract in first person. Renfe has been displaced, despite the replacement in his presidency, and it will be Transport who monitors compliance with the agreement with CAF. In the first place, there will be an increase in the final price due to the increase in the costs of raw materials, as explained by the General Secretary for Infrastructure, Xavier Flores, a few days ago, and there will be an increase in the total amount of the contract.
The agreement sealed between Renfe and CAF, for an initial 258 million, contemplated the possibility of going from 31 trains to 38. "The contract includes as an option the supply of up to 6 additional electric trains, and another hybrid train, for the wide fleet metric, which provides Cercanías and Media Distancia services in Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country, Galicia, Castilla y León, and Murcia”, can be read in the report on the operation of the general state administration services in the territory in 2020, the year the document was signed. The total price of this operation would exceed 300 million.
Raquel Sánchez has also announced a new tender for narrow-gauge trains for Cantabria and Asturias, although she has not specified any further details.
In addition, the agreement that Transport has reached with the Cantabrian and Asturian governments is that the Renfe and Feve services are free in both communities until the arrival of the new trains. There will also be a reinforcement in the conditioning of the trains in operation. The Government now calculates that this summer the so-called "comparative method" will be ready and that the manufacturing process will begin at the end of the year or the beginning of next year. The first deliveries are planned for the beginning of 2026.
They are not the only measures that Transport manages to compensate the Cantabrian and Asturian executives. Asturian President Adrián Barbón, a socialist, has been forceful in public about what happened and is trying to get new announcements from the central government. A few weeks ago he met with the Galician, Alfonso Rueda, and Castilian-Leon president, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, to demand the same investments for the Atlantic corridor as for the Mediterranean. The Executive responded by naming José Antonio Sebastián Ruiz commissioner for the infrastructure of the northwest. It remains to determine the headquarters of the working group, which could be Gijón.
