The recurring incidents of the last few days in the railway service have once again placed the transfer of Rodalies as one of the folders to be addressed in the negotiation for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. The issue will also be debated in a monographic plenary in Parliament. However, although both use the same concept, they refer to different things. ERC and Junts are asking for a complete handover that includes trains, tracks, catenary lines and stations, that is, all the infrastructure for the train to work. But the socialists think of a much more delimited transfer.
The Acting Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, has reiterated her willingness to discuss the economic transfer. In other words, the cost of the service that the ministry now pays directly to Renfe goes through the Generalitat. For practical purposes, it is about incorporating one more intermediary so that everything remains the same. Inconsequential for the 108.6 million commuters a year in the Suburbs, but with high political value.
However, with the money in the wallet, the Department of Territory would gain pressure on the public operator, since it could apply financial penalties for non-fulfilled services or similar issues. Managing these resources would allow in the long term to introduce competition, even between public companies: between the railway operators in Catalonia, Renfe and Ferrocarrils, an old wish of the Generalitat since the days of Jordi Pujol.
However, for immediate purposes, the financial transfer should be linked to the signing of a program contract between the Generalitat and Renfe that establishes quantities, investments and counterparties. It was not closed when the ownership of the service was transferred thirteen years ago and there has never been an agreement to do so: technicians have drawn up proposals that have been rejected by successive councillors.
The PSC sees it as a way to improve the current situation and provide a few years of stability to deal with an orderly transition that the central government will have to carry out in all the autonomies at the request of the European Union.
But without a program contract that leaves in writing the conditions of the relationship between the administration that owns the service and the operator, conflict can erupt at any time. This month the High Court of Justice of Catalonia has condemned the Generalitat to pay 80.9 million euros for a debt to Renfe between 2016 and 2019 for the services added after the transfer in 2010.
If the economic transfer is a matter of political will, the transfer of tracks, catenary lines, stations and trains has other implications. This includes the staff, and in 2021 the machinists already made it clear in a strike that they are head-on against any subrogation due to the possible effects on their working conditions and geographical mobility. It also affects the trains ordered by Renfe from Alstom and Stadler, which the company has committed to deploying in Catalonia, but which could take to another part of Spain if there is no agreement.
Halfway between the economic transfer of the PSOE and the full Junts and ERC there is the transfer of the ownership of some infrastructures. The Socialists brought it up in Parliament last year and the minister delimited it to the roads that connect with other autonomies or with France and those used for the transport of goods. The bulk of the extensive Rodalies network is part of the network with external connections and only part of it could be separated from the Maresme, Vic and Lleida lines.
The negotiations for the investiture resume a dialogue on the handover that came to envisage a progressive transfer of powers shortly before the ERC-Junts government broke up. In the previous months, senior officials of the Territory (Junts) and Sánchez's team met several times. The Generalitat even prepared a transitory calendar – not shared by the central government – to transfer trains from Renfe to Ferrocarrils, and an agreement with the Administrator of Railway Infrastructures (Adif) that sealed the investments committed in the Rodalies plan 2020-2030 and guarantee the conservation of roads, catenary lines and signaling.
With Junts a Territori, the dialogue with the ministry flowed in a way not remembered since the days of Santi Vila and Ana Pastor. The change of interlocutors brought the negotiations to a halt and dampened expectations despite the large amount of works and investments underway. The relationship with ERC, much colder, has been frozen in recent weeks after the Government called for the resignation of the minister following the publication of the causes of the breakdown of Gavà that interrupted the service for three weeks.
