Antoni Bassas' analysis: 'Illa and the Commuter Rail: to serve the Catalan people, they must confront the State'

Yesterday's commuter train plenary session and any commuter train plenary session that may follow will not change the reality of chaos, simply because the problem with commuter trains in Catalonia is not in Catalonia but in Madrid, in Spain.

If 25% of trains are broken and out of service, if Spain has gone more than a decade without buying new trains, tell me what Parliament can do.

If out of 264 escalators and elevators, 109 are out of service, it shows that Renfe cares little about the elderly, the sick, those on crutches, those with strollers, etc. When the opposition tells the regional minister that she can't ask people to be patient when they face an elevator that doesn't work, she's right.

If there's another breakdown this morning on the R2 Sur line, which means trains can only run on a single track on the stretch between Sitges and Garraf, what interest does Adif have in Catalonia?

If the workers affiliated with CGT, SF-I, and Alferro have gone on strike today because they don't want to be transferred to the Generalitat, with a selfishness and lack of solidarity unbecoming of workers (perhaps they're already fed up with this disastrous service), a full commuter train doesn't bother them either.

If the Parliament has once again addressed a problem that brought people to the streets in 2007, it means that Catalonia alone cannot solve it, that the problem is not only in Catalonia, but in Spain.

And here, President Illa is balancing. He strikes the right tone, apologizing (when in reality most of the blame isn't his), and when he promises a plan for the coming years, assuring that the transfer will be carried out at all costs. And when Minister Paneque seems to be on top of the problem, but the president knows he has a problem with Renfe and Adif, with the State; he has a problem with Minister Puente, who allows himself to boo us. And with them, it takes much more than fine words. The time has come for Illa, as it also came for Presidents Maragall and Montilla, to confront his own people and the State if he wants to serve the Catalan people, as he promised. And to confront her, he would need to go with ERC, Junts, and Comuns at the very least. Everyone knows it's impossible.

Finally, this proves once again that the Trial was not a collective hallucination; it was the most rational conclusion possible for more than two million Catalans.

Good morning.