Post by account_disabled on Feb 20, 2024 6:53:17 GMT -5
The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 , so, in the opinion of the sources consulted, " the Government of Spain can also reject the holding of international matches there by a team other than the national team." .As El Confidencial Digital has learned from sources close to the negotiations, the agreement between the Generalitat and Renfe for the Spanish operator to continue providing the Cercanías service in Catalonia will be signed in the coming days. The contract will extend until December 2015 . Service liberalization Until now, Renfe has been the operator in charge of providing the commuter service in Catalonia, in addition to doing so with the medium and long distance lines that run through the community, using the infrastructure owned by ADIF , the administrator dependent on the Ministry of Promotion . However, after the central government approved the liberalization of rail transport last July , the Generalitat had free rein to choose the operator to provide the Cercanías service in Catalonia. Contacts with the French SNFC As reported in this confidential report, senior officials of the Generalitat have maintained contacts in recent months with the SNFC , the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français (SNFC), the French state rail transport operator, Renfe's counterpart in the neighboring country.
The SNFC is also going to lose the railway monopoly in France, as is going to happen in Spain after the liberalization process launched by the Ministry of Public Works, and for this reason the French operator is open to negotiating new operating contracts, too. outside t Special Database he country. SNFC says 'no' to Mas offer Sources close to the talks, to which ECD has had access, reveal that contacts have recently been paralyzed , which has led the Generalitat to reverse its idea of dispensing with Renfe, and to resume talks with the Spanish company. , promoted by the new Minister of Territory and Sustainability, Santiago Vila, replacing Lluís Recoder. The president of Renfe himself, Julio Gómez Pomar , already warned a few days ago that the replacement of a national rail transport operator with an international one “is an extremely delicate and complex process .” Problems for a foreign operator Renfe operates 806 Cercanías services in Barcelona every day, with 200 trains that are its property .
Therefore, according to the sources consulted, one of the aspects that the French company has taken into account most, when evaluating the Catalan offer, was whether it had enough convoys prepared to provide the service in Barcelona . Since this was not the case, at least for the moment, one of the solutions was to rent their trains precisely from Renfe. A scenario that would have been met with rejection by the Spanish operator . The French firm has also taken into account that its convoys are of European gauge , and therefore had to be adapted to circulate on an infrastructure like the Spanish one, which is of Iberian gauge. Order to claim 3,500 million According to the sources consulted, Artur Mas' Executive has delayed the signing of the contract with Renfe as much as possible , to try to force Fomento to comply with the promised investments in the network in Catalonia, which were set in 2009 at around 4,000 million. euros . Although this request for money will not be fully achieved, it is expected that the new contract with Renfe will be accompanied by an investment of more than 800 million in the region's railway infrastructure, according to sources close to the Spanish operator.