Government takes to court Spanish public company in charge of railway infrastructure

Adif’s lack of investment in the short and medium distance railway network in Catalonia has been taken before the Court. The Catalan executive presented this Friday an appeal before Spain’s High Court, the ‘Audiencia Nacional’ accusing the Spanish public body in charge of railway infrastructure and the Spanish Ministry for Infrastructure of failing to fulfil the agreed investment plan. ‘We open the judicial way because the political one between both governments has proved to be broken’, stated the Catalan Minister for Territory and Sustainability, Josep Rull and lamented that only 4.2% of the 306 million euros due to be invested in Catalonia’s railway network has been carried out so far. Rull insisted on the Government’s will to guarantee the ‘reliability’ of the network, since it is estimated that in the last 4 years, more than 1,500 incidents in the railway service have been reported.

Since the Government doesn’t have any administrative mechanism to take actions against Adif, both bodies have repeatedly opted for finding a common strategy and solving the endemic problems affecting the short and medium distance railway network in Catalonia through negotiations. An agreement which, according to Rull, ‘has not been fulfilled’.

Adif and the Spanish Ministry for Infrastructure committed in 2014 to investing 306 million euros to improve the network in Catalonia and prevent more incidents, most of them related to the worsening of the railway facilities, from happening. This was the amount agreed between the Government, Adif and the public Spanish train operator Renfe. According to Rull, only 4.2% of this investment has been carried out so far. “Therefore, there is a flagrant failure to fulfil on the part of the Spanish Ministry for Infrastructure, but especially on Adif’s part’, he stated this Friday ‘who was in charge of undertaking the investment’.

‘We open the judicial way because the political one between both governments has proved to be broken’, insisted Rull and emphasised that ‘it is the executive’s duty to turn to the Court so that railway users’ rights can be guaranteed’. ‘We don’t want the timetables to be fulfilled to satisfy the Government; it is in the citizens’ interest’, he stated.

The Catalan Minister for Territory and Sustainability insisted on the need for Catalonia to have ‘a competitive and reliable’ railway network and that investment is vital to ‘prevent trains from being stuck and so that timetables can be fulfilled’.

Spanish Vice-president: ‘This proves that Catalonia also resorts to the Court’
Current Spanish Vice-president, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, responded to the Government’s action. ‘This proves that those who think they are right turn to the legal mechanisms available’, she said. During a press conference this Friday, Sáenz de Santamaría also noted that ‘the Catalan Government has presented double the number of appeals before the Spanish Constitutional Court than the Spanish Government’. She considered it ‘a paradox’ that ‘the first to judicialise topics is the first to skip the laws, usually doing so with a widespread campaign’.