Luís Montenegro gives priority to the Porto-Vigo rail connection, extending the Lisbon-Madrid deadline until 2034. The President of the Government wants the connection between capitals by 2030.
The president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, asked this Friday the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to “be very forceful when demanding” that Portugal have a high-speed train between Lisbon and Madrid in 2030.
“I think that Spain must be very forceful when it comes to demanding that the 2030 date be met.which is, furthermore, also what Europe is asking for,” said María Guardiola, at a press conference in Madrid, after a meeting with Sànchez.
Guardiola highlighted that at the Portuguese-Spanish summit in Faro this week, Sánchez expressed his intention to complete the Lisbon-Madrid connection (via Badajoz, in Extremadura) in 2030, but the Portuguese Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, did not corroborate this commitment.
According to the president of the Extremadura Regional Government, Portugal’s commitment is only to complete the Lisbon-Madrid line in 2034.
María Guardiola, who is from the Popular Party (PP, right), acknowledged having heard “good words” from the socialist Pedro Sánchez, but stressed that the Faro summit and the meeting held this Friday in Madrid would not result in “any commitments.” “
The president of the Extremadura Regional Government reiterated the complaints repeatedly made by authorities and various sectors of this Spanish region, regardless of political color, that there is a “historic infrastructure deficit”, with a lack of investment from the central State that “has sustained “bet on development and convergence” with the rest of the autonomous communities of the country.
The case of the trains in Extremadura, in a country that has the second high-speed network in the world after China, is one that most illustrates this complaint in the region and is repeatedly highlighted.
They are “decades of announcements by every government about investments that never materialized and deadlines that were never met”said María Guardiola, who stated that Extremadura “expects infrastructure that other regions [de Espanha] I’ve had it for over 30 years.”
“Today I asked the president [do Governo] Sánchez dignifies the railway to Extremadura and that the AVE [alta velocidade] It will be a reality,” he added, before stating that the region, like Portugal and Spain, cannot wait until 2034 for the connection of the two Iberian capitals.
“But we see that the matter, despite being strategic, is not safe,” he lamented, recalling that the initial promise was to have high-speed train in the region and between Lisbon and Madrid (via Badajoz) in 2010.
At the Faro summit this Wednesday, Sánchez stated that “the commitment of the Spanish Government in relation to the Madrid-Lisbon AVE is 2030.”
“I insist, it is the commitment of the Government of Spain and it is the horizon in which we are working,” he said, at the final press conference of the Iberian summit.
Sánchez added that, regarding the Lisbon-Porto-Vigo high-speed connection, “the commitment of the Government of Spain”, which it shares with the Portuguese executive, “is the year 2032.”
Luís Montenegro, in the same press conference, stated that the priority of the Portuguese executive “is the Lisbon-Oporto-Vigo-Madrid connection” and that the first section has already been awarded.
The President of the Portuguese Government added that “the second priority is the Lisbon-Madrid connection via Évora-Badajoz” and, in this case, “there is a first section that is already on the ground”, with “the need now to reconcile the third crossing of the Tagus River in Lisbon, with the construction of the high-speed connection in Évora”, in a “process that takes place simultaneously with the construction process of the new Lisbon airport.”
“We are working with both governments to try to combine the work schedules of both connections, so that they can be carried out in the shortest possible time,” added the Portuguese prime minister, who never mentioned dates.
Source: Observadora
