The President of the Generalitat (Catalan regional government), Salvador Illa, did the only thing one can do this Tuesday in the face of the mess that the commuter rail service has become: apologize to the public and promise that he will put all available resources into fixing it. This initial gesture of humility is even more than the one made last week by the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, in Congress, where he almost scolded the Catalans for complaining. Even so, the situation is so serious that it demands much more than an apology or vague plans for future improvement.
President Illa should not apologize for the responsibility of his government, which, after all, is managing a crisis that has been going on for a long time, but rather on behalf of the Socialist Party, which has governed Spain for more years than the PP and is, therefore, directly responsible for the disinvestment that the service has suffered in recent times. What's missing, for example, is the courage to clearly state that the Spanish governments' obsession with the AVE (High Speed Train), a kind of railway populism that has come at a very high price, is what has led to the current situation of commuter rail in Catalonia. Secondly, the president should also be more combative with Renfe and Adif, as he represents all Catalans who are victims of the service's deficiencies. And thirdly, immediate measures are needed to alleviate the problems caused by the construction work.
In this sense, the proposal to maintain free commuter rail service for the duration of the current exceptional situation, in which 24% of trains are not running and around thirty incidents are reported daily, seems like common sense. And here, Salvador Illa should convince Pedro Sánchez to maintain the aid. It would be incomprehensible that, in the current chaotic situation, users would be forced to pay for a deficient service starting in July. It's also absolutely essential that the emergency plan be implemented to improve user communication and to provide more agile alternatives in the event of breakdowns or outages.
Regarding the political debate, everyone should have adopted a more constructive attitude, given that this is a national crisis. It's understandable that Junts wants to wear down the Catalan government, but it's also true that perhaps it wasn't the best time after it became known that it had placed a former MP on Renfe's board of directors. The PP and Vox, as expected, attacked the transfer instead of accepting that perhaps if Renfe's commuter rail service had worked well all these years, the demand for the transfer wouldn't be so widely shared by Catalan society. And that in any case, it's an example of the infrastructure investment deficit that the country's business organizations have been denouncing for years.
It would be good if the PSC, Junts, ERC, and the Comuns (Commons) went together to Madrid to form a united front and explain that the situation is not comparable to that of any other part of the country, and that it's not a whim of the Catalans. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem possible for now.
