What should the "railway country" pact look like?
To begin with, I'm talking about a "national rail pact," not simply a national rail pact. The reason for this will become clear later. I'm referring, of course, to the offer made by the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, to address the rail debacle at the parliamentary session on January 28th of this year. The situation is serious and affects far more than just the government; it's a profound social and political crisis. This pact should include civil society, not just the political parties.
If we go into the details, I think it should be a table with the presence of all the entities and people who have contributed in recent decades, because we have spent a quarter of a century of little listening within Catalonia and even less from the State.
Documented contributions should be used as a prerequisite for participation. Civilian leadership should be prioritized, as politics already operates within the framework of Parliament, and the aim should be to issue a robust opinion within six months. An independent civilian chair would be more transparent and credible.
The first part of the task should be to take stock. An assessment of investments and equity in the State over the last few decades. An assessment of general economic figures, as well as those of the Generalitat (Catalan government). At the local level, we need an audit, led by L9 (the Catalan railway company), as a matter of transparency and for the sake of democratic health in the country, regarding a project that has exceeded all imaginable costs and has blocked government investment.
We need to review the current planning, both at the national and Catalan levels, and its shortcomings. Certainly, we must acknowledge that both models are completely outdated. For example, the commuter rail system will never be solved with the Orbital Railway line (the one that would connect Mataró with Vallès, Penedès, and Baix Llobregat without passing through Barcelona). It's a complete myth that too many politicians peddle, not to mention a simple fallacy. And this planning and implementation, in the Catalan reality, stems from the governments of the last quarter-century, with four parties holding power and a level of responsibility proportional to the time they occupied it, constituting, all in all, a widely shared inertia. The technostructure has reigned supreme over politics.
A negotiation table should begin by formulating the objective that the governance of the road and rail network should be as decentralized as healthcare and education. Obviously, not across 17 functional regions, but certainly in Catalonia, as a specific area, and with respect to other regions that could be recognized, such as Andalusia, Castile, the Cantabrian coast, etc. Decentralization means opting for a transformation of governance. If COVID-19 did not lead to mismanagement, as is currently the case in the rail sector, it was thanks to decentralization, not only regionally, but also at the operational level of hospitals. However, our stations are not service and business units, as they are in Europe. Nevertheless, the State relinquished control of healthcare but maintains centralized road networks (except in the Basque Country and Navarre) and, above all, rail networks, as one of the clichés of Spanish unity, even at the cost of widespread disorder.
A national forum could express a comprehensive vision for commuter, regional, and freight rail (Mediterranean Corridor) with a national ambition. This vision would encompass both infrastructure and services. The outcome would be to formulate the foundations of Catalonia's new Territorial Plan, which must necessarily be railway-based (hence my reference to a railway-oriented nation), to underpin a new urban relationship between Barcelona and the rest of metropolitan Catalonia.
The current railway crisis is unfolding against a political backdrop of weak political representation in relation to society. Therefore, the pact we are discussing must include the voice of the people: only in this way can the legitimacy of the parties and the government increase, which is precisely what is needed if we truly want to overcome demagogic polarization. On the other hand, we will regress, both the country and the parties, if we rely solely on the technical proposals of civil servants and if the discourse is limited to the government and the opposition, with all due respect. The necessary consensus must be built on a social, not just a political, foundation. The necessary political leadership requires a truly broad social agreement; that is, it requires openness, because the disorder we will be addressing is a profound crisis of both the model and the trust. And we deserve no less.
