Teruel Hay has charged this Wednesday against the Ministry of Transport for the content of the informative study of the Cantabrian-Mediterranean Corridor in the Sagunto-Teruel section. The formation considers that the documentation sent to public exhibition is a «joke» and a turn with respect to the project committed to the province, by replacing, in its opinion, the high-capacity corridor with an improvement of the current railway line.
This has been defended at a press conference by the spokesman of Teruel existe in the Cortes of Aragón, Tomás Guitarte, and the spokesman of the Teruel Existe Citizen Movement, Manolo Gimeno, who have warned that the Ministry proposes a very different infrastructure to the one initially planned.
TERUEL EXISTS BELIEVES THAT THE HIGH-CAPACITY CORRIDOR IS RENOUNCED
Guitarte explained that, after analysing the information provided by the Ministry and the plans disseminated, everything indicates that the study no longer contemplates an electrified double-track infrastructure for mixed passenger and freight traffic, but an action based, practically, on the current single track. In addition, he pointed out that, in the three sections analysed, the provisionally selected alternative is always the one that proposes the least modification of the existing route.
The spokesman recalled that Teruel existe already warned two years ago of the consequences of the modification approved in June 2024 in the Trans-European Transport Network, at the request of the Spanish Executive itself, when the Teruel-Sagunto section ceased to be considered a high-speed infrastructure to be classified as a conventional line.
claim to recover the original project
Guitarte has described this decision as a «premeditated» action in favour of the exclusive connection through Tarragona and Lleida. «It does not make sense that the Study between Teruel and Zaragoza appears with a double track and the one from Teruel to Sagunto is going to be with a single track,» he said.
He has also denounced that this approach breaks the commitment reached with Teruel existe to recover the original informative study of the corridor, prepared in 2012 and whose final approval did not take place when its environmental processing expired in 2015. «The new Study should be an update and expansion of the initial one, updating costs and expanding alternatives, but maintaining the option of the high-capacity corridor, which was the final objective of the Informative Study,» he said.
During his speech, Guitarte insisted that the main argument used to reject the corridor was its cost, estimated at between 3,600 and 4,000 million euros for the necessary variants in the ports of Escandón and Ragudo. However, he recalled that the State has undertaken larger railway investments for actions with less significance in the structuring of the network.
Finally, he has demanded that the study also incorporates the Teruel railway variant and the connections with PLATEA, the airport and the future intermodal terminal, actions contemplated in previous approaches and included in the tender specifications. «They told us that there would be a high-capacity corridor and now they want to settle for an improvement of the existing line. We are not going to accept it. Teruel cannot continue to be the territory where large infrastructures never arrive,» he said.
