The Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, faces a black parliamentary week. Two motions request its disapproval in Congress and in the Senate. The one that will be elucidated in the Lower House bears the signature of the PP; it will be debated on Tuesday and voted on on Thursday. The one in the Upper House is raised by ERC and Bildu and will be discussed on Wednesday.
Both initiatives coincide in targeting Raquel Sánchez for her “ineffective” management of rail transport, mainly in commuter networks and, in addition, the popular ones include in their motion a true amendment to the entire Housing Law, of which they also They hold the minister responsible.
The PP considers that the Government has repercussions on individuals in their capacity as owners and not on the Administrations, which are constitutionally bound, the measures included in the Law to facilitate young people’s access to rent and offer protection against evictions. “This reversal of responsibilities,” they argue, “means undermining and distorting the right to private property, which is a fundamental right.”
Thus, they demand that the Government open negotiations with parliamentary groups to achieve a State pact that includes guarantees for young people both for purchase and rental, expansion of the youth bonus, promotion of social housing and affordable rent in public collaboration -private and, in addition, promote a whole range of measures to fight against illegal occupation in order to evict within a maximum period of 24 hours and immediately in case of flagrante delicto; reinforce the penalties for usurpation with up to three years in prison; consider void the registration of an illegal occupant in the municipal register; prohibiting an illegally occupied property from being considered as a domicile or returning the amounts paid by the owner for IBI and Wealth Tax while the illegal occupation has lasted, among other measures.
In the statement of reasons for their initiative, the popular harshly attack the President of the Government for his continuous electoral promises in relation to housing and call the policy of intervention on rental prices “erratic”.
They also criticize that Pedro Sánchez sets himself the goal of making 20% ??of all homes in Spain public. “It is,” they say, “another milkmaid tale.” According to the PP, Spain has a residential park of about 18 million homes, so 20% would be 3.6 million. If one takes into account, they argue, that the number of homes built per year is 100,000, even if all of them were public, it would take more than 30 years, that is, until 2053, to achieve the “utopia” that promises the president of the Government.
Both the motion of the first opposition party and the one sponsored by the pro-independence ally of the Government with the support of the Abertzale formation, demand the disapproval of the minister for her “ineffective management” of rail transport. A dossier in which both the right and the left include the terrible operation of the Rodalies in Catalonia and to which the popular add the incidents in the Cercanías de Madrid, the fiasco of the trains of the Cantabrian Coast that “do not fit through the tunnels » and the «shameful inauguration» of the High Speed ??to Extremadura.
If the popular finally decide to submit the different points of their motion to a separate vote, the one who demands the disapproval of the minister for the management of the trains has the possibility of arousing the support of the Catalan formations.
The ERC initiative in the Upper House was announced by its parliamentary spokesman Gabriel Rufián last week in his face-to-face with the Prime Minister in Congress. The Catalan republicans denounce that serious incidents, that is, those that involve an affectation of more than 100 minutes, in the Rodalies service have increased by 60% in the last ten years and only in 2022 there were more than 525 incidents of this kind. guy. They give as an example that only in the last week, the fire of a signal box in the infrastructure of Gavà, the town of which Raquel Sánchez was mayor, affected seven lines, one of them with more than 30,000 daily users, and the regional trains from Tarragona and l’Ebre.
For Esquerra, the Rodalies situation can only be described as an “authentic systemic collapse.” “A bottomless pit,” they say, “of wasted hours and pending investments.” And they add: “Public powers have a positive obligation to guarantee a dignified material life for all citizens and failing in this task means failing as a State.”
The PP, for its part, points out that the delays in Rodalies are “continuous” affecting “about 70 trains a day.” They also point to the constant problems in the Madrid Cercanías that “only in the first 40 days of this year accumulated 227 incidents.”
ERC, in its motion of disapproval, also demands from the Government the full transfer of Rodalies to the Generalitat of Catalonia. This includes the relevant economic resources, ownership of the railway infrastructure, rolling stock, personnel and stations in conditions of use. It also requires immediate execution of all pending budget items provided for in the different plans.
In the text of their initiative, the Republicans describe as “overwhelming” the degree of non-compliance with the budgeted investments for Catalonia in railway matters. And they point out that in 2019 only 194 million of the 582 budgeted were executed; in 2020, 322 million of 711 and in 2021, barely 260 million of the 970 included in the Budget.
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