The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Oscar Puente, visited Barcelona this Friday to participate in a debate organized by elDiario.es. As expected, he has had to address the issue of transfer of Rodalies to Cataloniaand has taken the opportunity to announce that the concessions that are made on this side of the Ebro in railway matters, they can also be repeated in other autonomous communities. As long as, he pointed out, the claims are within the “legal framework”.
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Puente explained that the transfer of powers to the Generalitat “will take time”, and recalled that the agreement is based on three legs: “The economic one, which allows improve service; the operational one, with the creation of a new company in which both parties will be involved, and the infrastructure one, with routes that are passable because they begin and end in the autonomous community.”
Euskadi and Andalusia
Regarding the possibility of other autonomies following the same steps, the minister recalled that in Basque Country “A transfer is going to take place, which is already underway with formulas other than Rodalies.” He also made reference to Andalusia: “Yesterday I listened to the president of the Board (Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla) demanding the transfer of Cercanías. It seems like counterprogramming to Mr. Feijóo, because if Spain breaks for ceding Rodalies to Catalonia, because I don’t know if it will be break a little more to give them to Andalusia. Maybe it doesn’t break and what there is is a decentralized vision of the country“, which has had very good results in 40 years of democracy.” It remains to be seen, in the event that this happens, how the Government will look after more than 13 years of demands.