Over the past two weeks, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has been in charge of the work to recover the infrastructure destroyed by DANA. Days marked by a change of profile, during which he did not engage in the political fray, but focused on the need to confront, as quickly as possible, the enormous road and railway works, with the service Cercanías of the province of Valencia. seriously affected.
Precisely, the return to the circulation of high-speed trains between Valencia and Madrid prevented Puente from being present at the IVth Conference on Sustainable Mobility, organized by elDiario.es. A few hours earlier he had granted this interview with Ignacio Escolar, in which he assesses the evolution of the recovery work and the way in which Spain faces the modernization of infrastructure that must be resilient to the impact of climate change .
Concerning the management of DANA, Puente defends the distribution of powers. “It is essential to understand how the Spanish State is configured to be aware that ‘manu militari’ operations, in which one administration imposes itself on another, do not and cannot work,” he says. . Also, this management corresponded to autonomous administration. “What is reasonable is that the leadership of a recovery, of a disaster like this, be assumed by the one who has the skills and who has the greatest knowledge and the greatest proximity to the territory. ” At the same time, “what the Central Administration must do is make all the resources available to those who must exercise this leadership. And I think it was done and done well.
During these two weeks, Puente did not seek to provoke a political confrontation, nor to enter “in the evaluations, in the attribution of responsibilities” or “in the punches on the table”. “I think it is not operational and it is not typical of a modern decentralized state like ours. I think collaboration is better,” he says.
The priority was the restoration of the railway system and the road network. What was recovered before was the High Speed, not because it was considered more important than the Cercanías, but because it was less damaged. “There are people who talk about why you prioritize broadband,” Puente supposes. “Nothing is a priority. It’s a question of size, of the extent of the damage. The High Speed suffered damage over 1.2 kilometers in the Chiva tunnel and over 2.9 kilometers in the flooded and mud-filled Torrent tunnel. In other words, the task was to completely clear the Torrent tunnel, which was not easy. We replaced 1.2 kilometers of track in the Chiva tunnel, which is not small. For two weeks I have been working morning, afternoon and night in three shifts. But that has nothing to do with the magnitude of Cercanías. We are talking about more than 90 kilometers of network destroyed,” he summarizes.
Full recovery of the Cercanías network will take longer. Lines C1 and C2 should be operational, without the need for substitute buses, on December 22. On the other hand, “C3 is very destroyed”, assumes the minister. “There are 90 kilometers of route and more than half have disappeared. There we decided, which is no small thing, to connect Valencia to Aldaia also on December 22. Even though it’s not a lot of distance, it’s a lot of population. We are talking about more than 100,000 people who can benefit from the rehabilitation of Cercanías.
In the road network, those of the State were rehabilitated during these two weeks, with some temporary solutions and it is not yet possible to calculate the economic impact of DANA on all infrastructures. “It will take months. The communication network to and from Valencia and everything that surrounds Valencia, the ring roads, the main roads, the high capacity and high speed roads. All of this has been practically restored in its entirety. The problem will be internal mobility,” he emphasizes.
Despite all the work, “Valencia, at the moment, is a Gruyer cheese, and regional, provincial or local roads have a very high level of destruction and no measures have yet been taken,” he emphasizes. So it’s going to take a long time. “I would like to reiterate the willingness of the Ministry of Transport to cooperate in whatever is necessary on roads that are not our responsibility. We have placed ourselves at the disposal of the Government of Valencia, the Provincial Delegation and the Town Halls so that, if they tell us ‘you take charge of these roads’, we will immediately proceed with this operation”, underlines Puente.
A request for participation for which the State is prepared. “Right now I have nine teams dedicated to regular work” who can “start now if necessary, tomorrow, but I need this order.” I need you to tell me about this job, this other one, this other one. Take charge as a ministry and fix it yourself.
Profile change
Puente changed his communications profile from debate to only talking about management because “it was necessary.” “I was mainly responsible for communicating on the things that my ministry is doing, but I also occasionally spoke out against certain hoaxes, like that of the Bonaire parking lot, like the number of deaths, the number of missing people. This seemed to me terrible that this was established in public opinion without any real, factual or evidentiary basis. Honestly, it seemed very worrying to me and at some point I entered a territory that was not mine, but fundamentally. , I devoted myself to transport”, he summarizes “At the moment, I think that nothing else is appropriate apart from informing and working. And I think that the citizens would not understand either, and I think that they would not. would not appreciate at all, that some continue in this crisis more determined to attack, to justify themselves, to blame others than to work.
However, he clearly defends the role of the State and the importance of taxes to be able to act in the event of a crisis. “When the State is called into question, when the usefulness of taxes is questioned, I believe that the best way to fight against this is to put on the table the immense work that the State does and the enormous value of the taxes we pay,” he says. the head of Transport. “Taxes are not used to pay salaries, they are used to strengthen public services,” he emphasizes. “And that’s why it’s so important to communicate to citizens what’s being done.” »
And it will be time to take stock. “This misfortune, unfortunately, will not be here for a few days or a few weeks. We’ll see for how many months. It will therefore undoubtedly be time to look back, to take stock of what everyone has done, what everyone has contributed and to assign and demand responsibilities.
Rethinking infrastructure
The DANA from 15 days ago and this week highlights the importance of investment in infrastructure, not only in trains, but also in roads and airports. Concerning the latter, the expansion of El Prat, in Barcelona, on land likely to be flooded, is at the center of concerns. Puente doesn’t think “that’s the biggest problem.” “The expansion of El Prat airport is a good opportunity to adopt a good overall environmental approach that improves the situation of the airport,” he said.
In recent days there has also been a landslide on the AP-66 highway, which connects Asturias to León and where Puente does not see a lack of maintenance or investment. “In the case of AP-66, we are talking about the collapse of a wall that was supported, reinforced. We are talking about an extremely complex terrain and in which this type of events occur with a certain frequency,” he supposes.
“I would not extrapolate this case to the conservation of the road network as a whole,” he argues. “We spend almost €1.4 billion on road maintenance every year and are therefore getting closer to the figure that would be considered the minimum essential for adequate conservation, which is around €1.5 billion. euros. The ideal would be to increase this figure to 2 billion,” he admits. “Plus, because of climate change and the extreme weather events that are going to happen every year, we’re going to have to do this whether we want to or not, because there are going to be extraordinary costs that are going to become ordinary.”
Problems on the rail network
In recent months, problems and incidents on the rail network have also increased. One of the latest was the derailment of a train in the tunnel that connects Madrid’s Chamartín and Atocha stations, rendering one track unusable. “We know what happened. We don’t really know why,” admits the minister. “It was a train towed from one workshop to another by a model identical to the one it was transporting, which was in double composition with a “practically impregnable” anchoring system. “At a certain point, it seems like one of the two trains, the one that was towing, loses traction,” Puente says. “He decides to do a maneuver that will clarify what is happening, in the first place, to isolate the brakes of the train that was being towed.” And, second, “release the train with the result that the train slid down the slope and ended up against a wall”. A train which, ultimately, will be withdrawn piecemeal.
Puente faces the problems of recent months which coincide with the renovation of stations like Chamartín or Sants, in Barcelona. Works that coincide by “need and availability of resources”. “In the last five years, Spain has integrated 750 kilometers of high-speed road network, more than all the countries of the European Union combined, with the exception of France, Germany and Italy.” A network growth that has exceeded the expectations of several infrastructures, such as the aforementioned Chamartín.
“Last year we already made a record investment in conventional trains, 1.4 billion. This year we will reach 2 billion,” says Puente. “Adif breaks all records for calls for tenders in the construction sector. Nearly 4 billion. No country in Europe is making a similar investment. Only China invests this kind of amount,” he adds. “Spain has a remarkable railway system”, even if it has problems. “Yes, undoubtedly, but not out of laziness, quite the contrary,” concludes the Transport boss.
