Amnesty, referendum and, for dessert, Rodalies. They are just three of the claims in a list that independence presents to allow the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the central government. It's not that the list is long, but it is intense, with far-reaching issues. The demands of a more national nature predominate in the media, but yesterday the Catalan Executive took it upon itself to remind that on the table, for the re-election, ERC is also putting the complete transfer of the Commuter train service. "The negotiations will not be easy, they will be complex", the candidate confirmed yesterday.
The commons added the claim yesterday, with Sumar's approval.
"It shouldn't surprise him [that it's a claim]", point out from the independence movement. The demand for the handover is historic, as are the number of incidents that Rodalies has suffered over the years. Yesterday, let's go back to it. The train service experienced another chaotic day, a fact that the Government took advantage of to redouble the pressure on the Socialists and, despite the fact that its spokeswoman, Patrícia Plaja, did not dare to mark the transfer as a red line, yes who has described it as "indispensable" and "necessary" for the investiture.
However, he assured that Sánchez "should put his batteries in", because as he said, the negotiation is progressing too little by little. "I should move and be brave", he said in line with the words expressed by Pere Aragonès during last week's general policy debate in Parliament.
"What should be a reference service is a nightmare", he added, before assuring that "the Spanish Government has amply demonstrated that it is absolutely incompetent to manage the trains in Catalonia and, moreover, it does not care at all minimum".
The Generalitat points out that what happened yesterday is not a one-off situation. According to data from the Ministry of Land, there was an incident every two days in the months of July and August. The most famous was the derailment of a Talgo train without passengers in Sitges.
A third of the delays, on the other hand, are related to collisions and other external causes that have nothing to do with the infrastructure or the trains. The Government has taken advantage of yesterday's crisis to bring back to the fore a report already made public before the summer. In this report, there are 831 serious incidents recorded during 2022 on the Commuter and medium-distance network, according to data from the railway infrastructure administrator (Adif). It is a number that has been increasing in recent years due to the large amount of works that are being carried out at the same time in different points.
Renfe, on the other hand, brought to its ground the report that the Government made public yesterday to highlight that 92.5% of Rodalies users use the train normally. "At the press conference [the Government] reported delays to 22,500 trains", although the remaining 278,000 have done so on time, Renfe responded in a statement.
