You've got to have very little shame to stand up on the dias in the Spanish Congress the day someone has died in a serious train accident in Catalonia and say that improvements to the rail network depend on Esquerra Republicana and PDeCAT voting for your budget. You have to have a special quality, since it's third accident in the area since 2009 and the innumerable promises for investment in recent decades (and especially in these recent years) from the González, Aznar, Zapatero and Rajoy governments have not gone to the Rodalies regional trains near Barcelona, but to the Cercanías trains near Madrid. You have to say it that clearly because that's how they've enacted the Spanish budgets.
The public works minister, José Luis Ábalos, has had many opportunities and many examples to not have to play on a tragedy like Vacarisses. How many more deaths do there have to be, minister? The budget isn't going to be passed, whether or not it leads to an early election, and that position is irreversible. The blackmail that only with a new budget can they carry out steps like improving the minimum wage was a great lie from the beginning, as they now, after months of permanent intoxication in the news, recognise from the Moncloa government palace itself, planning to implement their star proposals by executive order.
Rodalies might be one of the things that the Catalans have most internalised in recent years as an example of the permanent inattention of the Spanish state. It's not at all strange to hear on the morning radio news that some train or other is behind schedule or that there's some important incident which makes it impossible for those who use the service to arrive on time with confidence. Vital infrastructure which is used every day by hundreds of thousands of passengers has an obsolete network due to its chronic lack of investment, serious problems due to the lack of budget items to construct tunnels which are essential to improve the frequency of trains and needs to even be able to minimally cover the essentials.
It was Mariano Rajoy in spring 2017, the previous prime minister, who promised more than 4 billion in investment before 2025 with half of that before 2020. Obviously, no sooner were these billions announced than the press friendly to him got excited and awarded him headlines like "Rain of millions". Now it's Pedro Sánchez in the Moncloa and there will certainly be more promises as the elections draw closer. Meanwhile, it's unnecessary for the public works minister to use a tragedy as pressure.