Oviedo (EFE).- The President of the Principality, Adrián Barbón, has today asked all the groups with representation in the Asturian parliament to reinforce the position of the regional Executive in its demand “clear, forceful and clear against the central government”, although be of the same political sign, due to the “embarrassment and shame” of the metric gauge trains.
Barbón has responded today in the plenary session of the regional parliament to questions from Podemos and the Forum on the form and actions that the Asturian Executive is going to carry out to prevent the deterioration of the Cercanías network and guarantee the quality and survival of the rail system.
It has done so five days after its Executive made an institutional declaration in which it asks the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda to compensate the Principality for the “non-compliance and unassumable delays” in rail communications, to purify responsibilities, and shorten delivery of the new trains to the maximum and before next Monday Barbón and the president of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla, hold a meeting in Madrid with the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, to address this very matter.
“Let’s unite our voices and reinforce the position of the Government in the face of the negotiation on Monday and support the institutional declaration in that clear, forceful and clear claim against the Government of Spain, because it is against the Government of Spain, in the face of a scandal that does not admit another qualifier that embarrassment and shame because it is like that and that is what I have told everyone ”, he stressed.
Three weeks after it came to light that the delivery of the new Cercanías trains for Asturias and Cantabria will be delayed at least two years, until 2026, due to having been contracted with erroneous measurements for the metric gauge network tunnels (formerly Feve), Barbón has said he feels free to put the interests of Asturias before any government, regardless of its color.
Debugging of responsibilities
To this end, Barbón has said that he will follow three premises, the first of which is the purification of responsibilities, with the demand for dismissals, although he will not request that of the minister, not without first meeting with her, nor that of the Secretary of State for Transportation, Isabel Pardo de Vera, for considering her the best ally of Asturias in defense of the Atlantic Corridor and for the opening of the Pajares Bypass.
If the Popular Party calls for his dismissal, it is, according to Barbón, because he dared to say publicly that two years of delay in the Variante de Pajares are the responsibility of Francisco Álvarez-Cascos, “expelled from a PP that now makes him a benchmark.”
The other two premises go through obtaining a compensation commitment and setting new delivery terms, Barbón has detailed, who has blamed both the PSOE and PP governments for the disinvestment that the old Feve suffered for decades.
Barbón has stressed that he does not maintain a condescending position, but rather demanding, as on a few issues because he felt “deceived and deceived” and had to find out from the press about this “ridiculous failed contract.”
For the spokesman for Podemos, Rafael Palacios, however, “the vaudeville of trains with poorly calculated gauges is a shame, a late and insufficient patch that cannot hide the serious deficiencies that exist in Asturias with the train.”
What happened, according to the purple formation, is the consequence of short-term management, the negligence of Renfe managers and a botch job that will have the consequence that trains that previously arrived badly now do so late or never.
Palacios has asked the president to seriously consider the reform of the Statute of Autonomy, which includes the assumption of new powers, including railways, an issue that the Forum spokesman has also claimed again.
From the Forum, Adrián Pumares has asked Barbón for more specificity about dismissals, compensations and deadlines, he has affirmed that what is crazy is not that the railway powers are assumed, but that the Government of Spain endangers the future of the Cercanías .
On this matter, Barbón recalled that to start talking about transfer, between 1,300 and 1,500 million would have to be available to fine-tune the network and that it would have to be made clear if assuming this service compensates financially or if autonomy can be carried forward. . EFE