Renfe dismisses the director of commuter rail services in Catalonia 'de facto'

BarcelonaThis month's suburban rail scandal has already caused the first internal upheaval at Renfe. Although no political party had explicitly called for his dismissal, the Spanish operator has withdrawn de facto the current director of Cercanías in Catalonia, Antonio Carmona, from the daily decisions.

According to ARA, the person leading the dialogue with the Generalitat, on behalf of Renfe, is the company's new operating director, Josep Enric García Alemany, who was appointed just a few days ago. Government sources acknowledge to ARA that this figure has "a lot of influence" and a relevant role within the new organizational chart established last week.

In fact, García Alemany's new position, that of operating director, still formally reports—in the official organizational chart—to the management of Cercanías and, therefore, to Carmona, although in practice it is the former who makes the decisions. As the company explained a week ago, García Alemany's position was created within the framework of the action plan that the operator has been implementing for weeks to improve service in Catalonia.

Carmona, appointed just a year ago, has not been formally dismissed, but now the day-to-day decisions of Cercanías de Catalunya in the wake of the railway chaos are being discussed with the new figure appointed in Madrid. Renfe sources in Catalonia limit themselves to saying that the new operational director, García Alemany, started his new position on Monday and recall that Carmona formally remains the director of Cercanías.

Who is the new key man at Cercanías?

Josep Enric García Alemany is a well-known engineer in Catalonia in the sector of public transport operation and sustainable mobility. He also has experience as a consultant, trainer, and manager of transport companies. He was the general director of the Valencia Municipal Transport Company, which manages a fleet of 500 buses and a staff of approximately 1,800 people.

At the same time, Renfe also appointed Uli Wessling Tolon as its Cercanías operations manager last week. He is also an engineer with extensive experience in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), where he has developed planning work in integrated and multimodal public transport services.

According to the operator itself, the two new positions were added to the Cercanías de Catalunya team with the consensus of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan regional government).