The Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, has stated that he considers it "reasonable" to wait for the magistrate who is instructing the case regarding the accident of the coastal walkway of El Bocal, in which six young people died in March and another girl was seriously injured, to determine the responsibilities for what happened.
Asked by the press this Thursday, Morán pointed out that "At the moment we are in, in which the court has already made considerable progress in the processing of what will certainly be a complicated and complex procedure, I believe that any opinion I convey at this time would be, at the very least, unfortunate."
The leader, whose department is responsible for the Demarcation of Coasts, has avoided commenting on whether he maintains that this agency acted "well" and that the City Council was "responsible" for the maintenance of the walkways, emphasizing that, in light of the progress of the investigation opened after the events of March 3, he prefers not to make additional assessments.
Since the beginning of the procedure, the judge has directed the criminal action against seven people: the manager of 112 and the Local Police officer who, the day before, received calls alerting about the poor condition of the wooden passage; the head of the Demarcation of Coasts in Cantabria and director of the coastal path work; the two officials who have served as heads of the Projects and Works Service since its construction; the engineer who drafted the project of the damaged walkway and the representative of the construction company.
Additionally, the instructor has pointed out the City Council, the Demarcation itself, and the company Dragados as possible civil responsible parties. In this context, Morán insists that it is "reasonable" to let the judge determine the responsibility in the facts.
Debate on access to Langre beach
Apart from this case, and within the framework of an intervention on the environment in a European course at UIMP (International University Menéndez Pelayo), the Secretary of State referred to the situation of access to Langre beach, in Ribamontán al Mar, and to the anonymously established passage due to the lack of an official access, which would not have authorization.
Morán has warned that "Carrying out actions of this type is not always the most advisable," appealing to security reasons. In this sense, he has emphasized that "It is reasonable that any infrastructure, access road, and intervention that is carried out in a public domain access area, for the very interest of the safety of citizens, meets requirements that must be those that govern in each case the execution of any project."
Transfer of the competencies of Coasts to Cantabria
Finally, the Secretary of State has addressed the transfer of the competencies of Coasts to Cantabria, assuring that the operation is "ready so that, at any moment, it can be completed." He explained that the proposal formulated within the framework of the bilateral negotiation replicates the model applied in the Basque Country and Galicia.
As he has indicated, "Cantabria assumes that this is the transfer model, so that, at any moment, either at the request of the Cantabrian Government itself or the Ministry of Territorial Policy, it can be completed. From the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, we have already given the green light to that transfer."