At the gates of the metro stations and Rodalies de Barcelonaall users were presented this Monday with a ‘information’ brochure about discounts and prices for public transport. The information is basic, with photos of the different season tickets and their prices, but what has caught the attention of thousands of travelers is that on the first page, with the title “Anar amb public transport, premium tea”, the Barcelona En Comú logowhile the back cover is dedicated to the mayor Ada Colau taking credit of the measures promoted by President Pedro Sánchez for all of Spain, which his team has also done from Twitter. In the version for Metropolitan area shares protagonism with the second vice-president of the Government, Yolanda Diaz.
Nine months before the electionsthe leader of the Comuns tries to get revenue from the outcome of the discount campaign to encourage public transport and does so with a flyer in the style of those distributed in campaign electoral. At the end of March, Colau claimed in an interview a 50% cut for T-Usual for three months, and appealed to state funds, although he had not discussed it with any administration. The Government replied that the idea was “electoralist” and would cost 50 million euros.
Weeks later, at the beginning of summer, Sánchez announced the discounts to encourage travel by public transport, with the idea of a reduction that in the end reached free in the cases of Renfe, and 50% in the season tickets and tickets managed by the Metropolitan Transport Authority (TMB) in the case of Catalonia.
Big discounts
The brochure in question announces in large numbers the “rebates” of 30, 50 and 100%, and places its party’s logo clearly visible. Another page is to highlight the free mid-distance and Rodalies de Renfe; another to photograph the ATM transport tickets together with the corresponding discount labels, like in a commercial advertisement. And the last diptych side closes with a text that begins like this: “Just as the mayor Ada Colau demanded in Marchor, we have managed to get the State Government to lower the price of public transport“.
Below is an allusion to inflation, families and the climate emergency. Then they remember the “strategy“of the city council to freeze rates since 2015 and expand and “improve the bus and metro network or the connection of 9 municipalities with the tram union.” The page, all in red and with a large photo of Colau also dressed in that tone , like its logo, closes with a statement in the first person: “I am pleased that our proposal has been accepted. It is fair that the people who have the hardest time making it to the end of the month have help to use public transport.”
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Below, a mobile phone number is provided to find out on Whatsapp everything they are “doing for Barcelona”.
The version for the metropolitan area opts for purple and a double photo of Colau and Díaz, with their testimonies, and the En Comú Podem logo.