Changes at Renfe's top management: the heads of passenger and freight services have been replaced.

BarcelonaThe shakeup at Renfe's top management has become even more evident this week: the company has renewed the leadership of its two main subsidiaries, the one that deals with passengers and the one that deals with freight transport. The company has decided to dispense with the current head of passenger services, Rafael Cortés, who had only held the position for nine months. It has also appointed a new freight director, Imanol Leza, to cover the interim period that began in February when Joaquín del Moral, the director of recent years, was dismissed.

The company's board of directors yesterday appointed Miguel Ángel Vicente, current technical and operations director of the passenger subsidiary, as the new general manager, replacing Cortés, who came from the bus company Avanza. Vicente is an industrial engineer and has 20 years of experience in the railway sector, all of them within Renfe. He has already held various positions within the company in production, operational planning, and technical management, and in this way the company is betting on an internal promotion with extensive knowledge of the company. He will now be the person ultimately responsible for defining general policies for all high-speed, long-distance, and medium-distance services, at a time when fleet deterioration and incidents are dominating the headlines.

Vicente's arrival has been well received within the operator. Although the company assures that Cortés' departure was "by mutual agreement," internal sources indicate that the work environment had become complicated. Among the latest controversies experienced by the passenger subsidiary is the decision to unilaterally cut the alternative plan in half proposed for the major sixteen-month shutdown of R3.

New merchandise manager

At the same time, Renfe has also appointed Imanol Leza as its new general director of freight. Leza will fill the position left by the dismissal of Joaquín del Moral in February, which until now had been filled on an interim and temporary basis by Moisés Mata. According to Renfe, Leza has more than three decades of experience in mobility, infrastructure, and technology, holding management positions at Euskotren, Eptisa Cinsa, and the Basque Government. He joins at a key moment for the reorganization of this subsidiary, which has been stalled for two years with the merger project with Medway—the railway subsidiary of the MSC shipping company.

The changes at Renfe this week are in addition to the internal movements also in Catalonia. This week, the official dismissal of the current director of Cercanías Cataluña was made public. Antonio Carmona, who has already been replaced de facto in March by a new director of operations, who also came from the bus sector, Josep Enric Garcia Alemany.