The spokesperson of the 'Popular' Parliamentary Group in the Cortes of Castilla y León, Ángel Ricardo Porras de la Fuente, defended this Wednesday before the regional Plenary a Non-Legislative Proposal (PNL), supported by Vox and the Mixed Group and rejected only by the PSOE, which urges the Government of Spain to prepare an updated inventory and a detailed schedule regarding the situation of railway infrastructures and services in the Community.
During the defense of the initiative, the PP parliamentarian emphasized that the proposal aims to "know the truth" about state-owned investments and to ensure that pending actions are executed without claiming "privileges or extraordinary investments," but rather "information, planning, transparency, and execution."
Porras de la Fuente highlighted the strategic position of Castilla y León as a transit hub between Madrid, the northwestern peninsula, Portugal, and the rest of Europe, and stressed the importance of the railway for territorial cohesion and the support of rural areas. At the same time, he expressed his concern about the accumulation of "announcements, studies, and promises" from the central Executive that, in his opinion, remain unfulfilled in real works.
The text of the PNL demands a detailed inventory that includes the administrative situation and the causes of delays in projects such as the high-speed Burgos-Miranda-Vitoria, the electrification Salamanca-Fuentes de Oñoro, improvements in the Salamanca-Medina del Campo, Madrid-Ávila-Medina del Campo, and Soria-Torralba lines, the development of the AVE Palencia-Santander, the duplication of sections considered strategic, and the promotion of the railway connection between Madrid and Portugal.
Likewise, the proposal demands specific dates for bidding, awarding, and starting works for initiatives such as the railway highways, the intermodal platform of Torneros, the Palencia-Valladolid-Medina del Campo commuter corridor, and the urban integrations still pending in various cities of the Community.
Regarding services and industry, the representative of the Popular Group demanded the final approval of the Master Plan for the Atlantic Corridor for Castilla y León and the recovery of frequencies and seats that were eliminated. In addition, the text proposes to declare public service obligations for all high-performance regional corridors, in order to allow the application of the 25 percent discount provided by the Junta on multi-journey transport tickets.
The representative also lamented the lack of response from the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility to the formal requests of the regional Executive, after claiming the right of citizens to know clear deadlines for pending actions such as the Silver Route, the direct train Burgos-Aranda-Madrid, the Soria-Castejón line, and the Manzanal Loop.
The representatives of the Mixed Group also supported the 'popular' initiative, although they took the opportunity to reproach both the PP and the PSOE for their years of responsibility at the head of the central Government and the "systematic non-compliance" with the investments committed to the Community.
In the positioning, the representative of Soria Ya, Ángel Ceña Tutor, labeled it "sarcasm" that the PP now demands progress on projects like the Soria-Castejón line after 14 years of mandate in Spain without having promoted any action, and recalled that the situation is no different from the 16 years of socialist governments.
Ceña placed both formations on the same level of "promises and non-compliance" and lamented that the province of Soria has been without train circulation for 18 months after the closure of the connection with Torralba.
In similar terms, the representative of Por Ávila, Pedro Pascual Muñoz, described the state of railway transport in his province as "absolute shame" and equally blamed the ministers of the PSOE and the PP for the lack of investments that transform the network.
For his part, the representative of UPL, Luis Mariano Santos, considered the initiative to be a "letter to the Three Wise Men" and questioned the credibility of the PP when demanding deadlines when, as he recalled, these infrastructures were not executed during the mandates of Mariano Rajoy.
The Vox spokesperson, María Luisa Calvo Enríquez, supported the initiative of the PP by understanding that it is essential to demand from the Government of Spain reliable schedules, the publication of budgetary commitments, and the specification of real investments in the railway infrastructures of Castilla y León.
Calvo warned that the Community "cannot continue to be the great forgotten" of the central Executive and emphasized the importance of addressing the needs of a "vast territory, with a dispersed population and a business fabric that requires modern communications to compete." Furthermore, she reproached the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, for "accumulating" announcements and commitments that do not translate into works or improvements in services.
In her speech, the Vox representative criticized that the railway connections of Castilla y León continue to be relegated in favor of other political priorities of the state Administration. In this line, she demanded the execution of the pending high-speed lines, the reinforcement of conventional rail, the development of railway highways, and the implementation of a specific master plan for the Atlantic Corridor.
Regarding the integration of the western peninsula, the spokesperson denounced the decision of the Ministry of Transport to "postpone" until 2027 the procedures to recover the Ruta de la Plata train. She also rejected the elimination of high-speed stops in Zamora, Puebla de Sanabria, Medina del Campo, and Segovia, and reiterated the demand for early morning frequencies adapted to the labor needs of users.
Finally, Calvo urged the Government of Spain to stop using territorial cohesion as a mere slogan and to adopt effective measures in the connections of Salamanca, Ávila, and Soria, guaranteeing a public transport offer that favors the socioeconomic development of the rural municipalities of Castilla y León.
The only votes against came from the Socialist Parliamentary Group. Its spokesperson, Laura Pelegrina, accused the Junta of Castilla y León and its president, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, of maintaining a "continued inaction" for four decades in terms of infrastructures, transport, and regional public services. She also reproached the PP for resorting to "victimism" and "partisan strategy" in the PNL debated in the Plenary.
Pelegrina stated that the initiative of the Popular Group aims solely to "attack the Government of Spain" for electoral purposes, while hiding the investment deficit of the regional Administration in the road network, the transport model, and rural connections.
In her speech, the PSOE parliamentarian listed the actions of the central Executive in Castilla y León and detailed that the high-speed line Burgos-Miranda de Ebro-Vitoria is expected to be completed in 2027, with four sections currently under construction and three others pending to be tendered before February 2027.
Similarly, she placed the conclusion of the electrification of the Salamanca-Fuentes de Oñoro section before March 2027 and highlighted the 150 million allocated to the rail highways on the Madrid-Ávila-Medina del Campo line, as well as the 92 million invested in the Soria-Torralba route.
To close the debate, the 'popular' representative again criticized the "inaction" of the Government and censured that the PSOE avoided any reference to the management of those responsible for the Ministry of Transport during the last eight years of socialist government.