The Renfe train drivers' strike lasted one day, because yesterday it was cancelled after negotiations between the unions and the ministry in Madrid.

With fifteen minutes to go before the protest called by railway unions in front of the Ministry of Transport, a group of demonstrators traveling from Tarragona were still 60 kilometers from Madrid. Victims of their own crisis, the problems plaguing the high-speed rail line between the Catalan and Spanish capitals prevented them from reaching the demonstration. Finally, some 300 people—many wearing fluorescent vests—made their presence felt at Nuevos Ministerios, the complex of buildings that houses the headquarters of five ministries, including the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, headed by Óscar Puente. The flags of the six unions that had converged there—red, black, green, white, and blue—waved, creating a cross-section of the entire "railway family." Workers from Renfe, Iryo, and Ouigo shared the space with workers from Adif. These are the companies at the center of the storm following the Adamuz and Gelida accidents and the commuter rail chaos. "This must mark a turning point, a watershed moment," says Pepa Páez, general secretary of the CCOO railway sector, from the stage. "We cannot allow ourselves to normalize what is not normal, we cannot resign ourselves to the railway functioning on a patchwork of solutions," she adds. Noelia Martín, from the CGT, agrees and believes that the recent accidents are not "isolated incidents," but rather "another symptom of the chronic illness" afflicting trains in Spain. And Diego Martín, general secretary of the Spanish Union of Railway Drivers (Semaf), demands immediate changes and a "review of the sector and all its measures," lamenting the insufficient effort dedicated to maintaining the rail network.

The AP-7 motorway is the backbone of the country. The other roads are limbs of a structured body. The AP-7 was designed with sufficient quality (compare it to the A-2 in Lleida) and has been a toll road for 50 years, extended by the addition of a third lane (and, consequently, by extension on the C-32). The only ministerial magnanimity was the addition of a fourth lane on the Vallès section and the removal of the Bellaterra toll, by which time more cars were already using the side lanes than the main carriageway. Today, the AP-7 serves as a major connector between the entire Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and Morocco. Heavy goods vehicles account for more than a quarter of the total traffic. Every day, the AP-7 carries up to 13,000 trucks through La Jonquera, and more than 25,000 travel along the central section in Vallès.

More than 1,300 businessmen met this Wednesday at the fairgrounds of Ifema, in Madrid, to demand the acceleration of the construction of the Mediterranean Corridor. They were convened by the platform Quiero Corredor, driven by the Valencian Association of Entrepreneurs (AVE), which of late has been at the forefront of this historic claim which, however, has the support of entrepreneurs from regions around the Mediterranean regardless of their political allegiance. The Catalan government, as it does in other areas, such as financing, which presuppose an autonomous relationship within the State, has for years now ceased to be at the forefront of these claims, despite the fact that, logically, the Catalan business community is fully committed to it and demands support from the Catalan Government. We must remember, however, why we still do not have this corridor and, also, why it is likely that we will have it before 2030. We do not have it because the People's Party did not want it and continues to consider it a threat to its project of a radial Spain in which everything has to begin and end in Madrid, be it trains, money or companies. So little did it want it that in 2012, when Rajoy was in government, Spain was the only country in the European Union to vote against it because its proposal was to make the Mediterranean Corridor also pass through Madrid and connect it with Europe with a tunnel through the Aragonese Pyrenees that the French refused to endorse. And we will have it because Europe does consider it a priority project and, therefore, assumes 40% of its cost. Furthermore, there is unanimity among the business world that it is a necessary and fundamental infrastructure to boost the Spanish economy.