The Spanish transport minister, Raquel Sánchez, has closed the door on the possibility of transferring control of Barcelona's suburban rail service to the Catalan government. “It’s not an issue that’s on the table,” she said this Friday.
Coinciding with the strike by train drivers which caused transport chaos across metropolitian Barcelona, the Catalan government has demanded from the Spanish executive the immediate transfer of Catalonia's suburban and regional rail services in response to the incidents that have been occurring. In fact, the spokesperson in the Spanish Congress for the Podemos-affiliated Comuns, Joan Mena, had opened the way for the coalition government to carry out the transfer in the near future. There has also been discussion of incorporating the long-desired transfer into the 2022 Spanish and Catalan government budgets.
However, in statements to journalists after the closing of Barcelona New Economy Week (BNEW), the minister celebrated the end of the strike by the Renfe train drivers with respect to all the "negative" impact it has had on the daily lives of many people in Catalonia, and defended the management of the affair carried out from the Spanish executive, without foreshadowing any transfer.
"We have worked from the beginning to resolve this strike. In the end an agreement has been reached with the union which, in short, was nothing more than ratifying the commitments and the plan to recover all the services that Renfe had already set out since the end of the pandemic", she added.
At the time of the government of the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the then-PM agreed with the tripartite Catalan government on a minimum transfer of suburban rail, without including trains, stations or tracks. It only gave the Catalan authorities control over timetables and other secondary issues, and ended up being irrelevant.
Promise of 3 billion
Raquel Sánchez also said that the ministry she heads plans to allocate 3 billion euros for Catalonia, following the agreement between the PSOE and Podemos on the content of the next Spanish government budgets.
The minister made the statements at the end of the BNEW business event, which was also attended by the Catalan government secretary for business and competitiveness, Albert Castellanos; the deputy mayor of Barcelona city council, Jaume Collboni, and the state delegate to the Barcelona Free Trade Zone Consortium (CZFB), Pere Navarro.
Sánchez has stated that Catalonia will be the community that will receive the most infrastructure investment from the Spanish transport ministry during the coming year. She noted that the Spanish government is "committed" to the development of Catalonia in general and Barcelona in particular, and expressed the will of the Pedro Sánchez executive for the city to be an engine of transformation. "We want Barcelona to recover all its industrial muscle, its business capacity and strength," the minister argued.
She regretted not having reached a political consensus to expand Barcelona Airport, although in her opinion the Spanish government maintains its intention to turn the airport into an international hub, always "subject to environmental requirements".
Sánchez explained that the budget agreed this Thursday by the Spanish cabinet aspires to economic development based on multiple centres, and that for this reason it is necessary to "territorialize the decision-making centres and the bodies of the state administration".
"It is a budget aimed at generating opportunities for a just economic recovery," she said, insisting on maintaining Barcelona as an industrial and innovation hub.
She also said that the city must be those things "without being an island" - that is, in her view, in collaboration with Spanish autonomous communities and cities.