Despite the truth that the 267 million contract was awarded throughout the socialist mandate, the bidding paperwork that contained the error had been ready with Íñigo de la Serna as minister. The drawback arose after the collision of two completely different knowledge in a Royal Decree accepted in 2015 that marked the width that the trains ought to haveIn 2021, Transparency supported Renfe’s determination to not make public the contract paperwork the place the error was discovered, arguing that they comprise industrial info
Renfe didn’t purchase metric gauge trains in 2020 that don’t match by way of the tunnels in Asturias or Extremadura, in an issue that has value each the president of Renfe, Isaías Táboas, and the Secretary of State for Infrastructures their jobs, Isabel Pardo de Vera. But she did get them organized within the unsuitable manner and it took her greater than a yr to appreciate that the order positioned with the CAF firm was unfeasible. In reality, the misguided contract started to be cast on the time that the one which the favored Íñigo de la Serna controls the ministry, handed by way of the arms of specialists and public technicians, was accepted by the positions of belief and by the administration of Renfe and delivered lastly in bidding for one more Executive, this time socialist. And all this, with out anybody, neither politicians, nor trusted positions, nor engineers, nor technicians, noticing the error, stipulated in an inventory of circumstances that in keeping with the sources consulted by NIUS had been unsuitable and that also stay secret at this time, with the approval of Transparency.
On paper, the story of this mess begins in June 2020, when the Renfe administration approves awarding the CAF firm a million-dollar prepare provide contract price 267.4 million euros. The order was the important thing piece to resume the transport of the narrow-gauge railway community, outdated by time. In reality, the physique in command of this community, known as FEVE and now built-in into Renfe, had not purchased new wagons since 2007.
However, in actuality the issue arose 5 years earlier than this buy, when in 2015 the technicians from the ministry itself drew up the so-called “Galibos Railway Instruction”, or what’s the identical, the doc that marks the scale of the gauges. monitor in Spain. That order, accepted by the Ministry of Public Works on July 14, 2015, dictates the measures that trains should adjust to in an effort to flow into on the Spanish rail community. This regulation can also be utilized to all purchases that Renfe constructed from that second on. The essential drawback was that the overall nature of this regulation was not appropriate for tunnels already constructed within the narrow-gauge community, which in some circumstances are greater than 30 years previous and will not be tailored to present laws when it comes to dimensions. To know the gauge of those previous sections, the order says that the technicians must be guided by the infrastructure catalogue. That is to say; they must seek the advice of the scale of every tunnel since at the moment there was no standardized width.
confidential sheets
With this on the desk, FEVE technicians used to make use of what is thought in slang because the “comparative methodology”, which quantities to ordering trains of the identical width as these at present working on the route. If the previous undergo the tunnel, the brand new must go too. Problem solved. The dysfunction got here when the ministerial order accepted in 2015 didn’t ponder this formulation when ordering the trains, because the wagons bought since that yr by Renfe should essentially be primarily based on the usual accepted by Transport. That is to say: the identical norm acknowledged that there have been narrower tunnels within the structure however compelled to order -generally and from that moment- the autos with the scale regulated by the decree.
For this cause, when the contract paperwork had been drawn up, the technicians targeted on the latest laws and Renfe employees took the gauge figures from the order accepted in 2015, the usual measurement in Spain since then, as a substitute of attending to the necessity for the infrastructure catalog to be reviewed on these routes. And so, Renfe commissioned CAF with trains with a theoretical width that aren’t able to touring alongside the route for which they had been designed, however that did meet the authorized necessities established by the laws, additionally designed by their technicians.
The authorized schizophrenia was such that on February 18, 2023, greater than two years after bidding for this contract, Transport accepted a brand new ministerial order that actually allowed the so-called “comparative methodology”, that’s: ordering the trains with the identical width because the previous ones, so long as the brand new wagons are going to work on branches the place, because of the measurement of the tunnels, it’s unimaginable to adjust to the present laws.
For this cause, the error of the contract began with a PP administration, continued with a socialist authorities, has value the place of at the very least two positions of belief and a substantial delay relating to reforming the corporate’s prepare fleet for numerous areas dependents And the contract paperwork? The supposed reason for authentic sin? No one exterior the Ministry of Transport, Renfe or the concession firm is aware of about them. In reality, in 2021 the Transparency Council supported the Government when it refused to make the information public on the grounds that this documentation, which was delivered solely to the eight corporations that tendered the competition underneath a confidentiality settlement, contained info of particular industrial worth for Renfe, which needed to be protected.