Till the 30th November…

No, it is not a joke. It’s the truth. The suburban train in Barcelona will not work till the 30th November. It means that users won’t be able to go by train to their work or to their house.
Work On the high velocity train (AVE), which is soon to arrive in Barcelona, is the main cause of this inconvenience. In Bellvitge, one of the main stops of the suburban train, the floor collapsed five weeks ago and three lines stopped working. From then till now, only half of one of these lines has been repaired, the C-2 south. I say “half” because in this stretch the rail works only in one way, so the frequency of the trains is much reduced than before.
People who normally use the train are now taking the bus. Renfe, the public Spanish Railway Company offers this alternative transport during the time that the train will be inactive.
But it is not a very good solution. One train can transport almost 300 people in each journey; the bus can only take 55. In Barcelona, there are not enough buses to cover Renfe’s need, so the company contracted the service of different companies around the country. Drivers from Zaragoza, Valencia, Sevilla, La Coruña… arrived in the Catalan city with their buses to follow the same route as the trains do. Obviously, the first week was chaotic. Drivers didn’t know the route, it was their first time in Barcelona and they got lost. As a result of this, buses arrived very late at their final destinations. And one of the serious consequences was the traffic jams on the roads around Barcelona. To the normal daily traffic, hundreds of buses substituting trains occupied the routes. It was amazing!
Why has nobody forseen all these catastrophic consequences? In my opinion, the solution to the mess of the suburban trains was not very good, but it was the best of a bad bunch. Nevertheless, the main persons in charge of the AVE works should have been more diligent. They were such in a hurry and they didn’t use their common sense. The Spanish Minister for Transport promised long time ago that AVE would reach Barcelona by 21st December. But works were on delay and they had to start working very quick.
The result of the pathetic management by the Minister is big holes on the floor, more than two hundred thousands people moving by bus and suffering traffic jams on the journeys, and one Minister for Transport, Magdalena Alvarez, asking to the Catalans to be patients. She seems to be laughing at us.
I think Catalans have been very patient, too much. We need to be better able to fight against Spanish manipulation. Catalans are subjected to decisions taken in Madrid. But Madrid doesn’t know our needs. I really believe in a Federal State where each region could make its own decision and also could manage its own money. Spain would work much better. So would suburban train.