Minister Óscar Puente, whose Secretary of State for Transport is Gipuzkoa José Antonio Santano, has signed another socialist based in Gipuzkoa as the new president of Adif in the midst of a crisis after the departure of Ángel Contreras. This is Pedro Marco de la Peña, born in Santander in 1969 and who until this Tuesday was the “number two” of Transport in the Basque Country, since he was vice-minister first with Iñaki Arriola and since this summer with the new minister of the branch, Susana García Chueca. Marco de la Peña was already general director of the regional equivalent of Adif, the company ETS (Euskal Trenbide Sarea), under the government of Patxi López, between 2009 and 2013.
Those who have worked with him highlight his “very deep knowledge” of the railway sector, both from a technical and contractual point of view. “He is a person with an immense capacity for work and who has all the figures in his head. He is also a very good boss,” they say of his former team. He maintains very good personal relationships with the senior officials of the ministry established in recent years.
As Deputy Minister, he managed the implementation in Euskadi of 50% discounts on all public transport managed by regional, regional and municipal authorities, as well as the integration programs of the different existing payment cards, the Mugi of Guipuzcoan, the Bat of Alava. and Barik of Bizkaia. In the railway sector, the transfer of the management of Cercanías to Euskadi has just been finalized and the flagship project was the creation of a new line in Alava. Marco de la Peña passes to the central government, which must make the final decision on the high-speed connection between the “Basque Y” and Navarre, in the middle of the debate between the Vitoria variant and that of Ezkio/Itsaso, a small town in Gipuzkoa. This issue divides the parties according to the territory.
Marco de la Peña, a civil engineer from the University of Cantabria and graduated in 1993, has worked for important companies in which he has held different positions of responsibility. He was construction director at Ferrovial from 1994 to 1999, technical director at Amenabar from 1999 to 2007 and general director of the same company from 2016 to 2019. He also worked at Exbasa from 2007 to 2009 and at Balzola from 2013 to 2015. In 2020, just before joining the coalition government of Iñigo Urkullu with the PSE-EE as vice-councillor, he was general director of I-Ingenia and Fhimasa.
The Ethics Commission, a body that analyzes the activities of senior officials, examined a consultation on the rewards granted by Marco to I-Ingenia, of which he was appointed representative. These were two direct contracts (without competition) of 16,819 and 5,080 euros for technical assistance and project management work, respectively, for a total of 21,899 euros. The opinion, presented by this newspaper in 2023, concluded that no irregularities had occurred, while emphasizing to senior officials in general the obligation to abstain and delegate decision-making in the event of a collision with other interests.
