LOGROÑO, May 7. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Senator Mar Cotelo intervened today in the Senate session to ask the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, why “he has omitted La Rioja as one of the absolutely priority territories for the arrival of High Speed”.
This is what he formulated after categorically stating that “with the PP governments, La Rioja was always involved in the strategic railway projects, but it was the PSOE, specifically President Zapatero, who took the region off the High Speed map in 2013, and undercover”. The Riojan has considered that La Rioja “has become the only island within the peninsula with the complicity of Mrs. Andreu. We have the same insularity as the Balearic Islands or the Canary Islands, but without their numerous air connections.”
In his statement of reasons for asking the minister his question, Cotelo wanted to give a quick summary of the infrastructure in La Rioja: “There is no direct highway to Madrid, there is no OSP on the only flight from Logroño to Madrid that we have, and we have a train that takes 4 hours to get to Madrid.”
The senator has reproached Minister Puente for saying literally in the same Chamber in a control session that “there are three territories that are absolutely priorities. For the ministry they are, I have said it many times: Extremadura, Cantabria and Euskadi. “They are the three territories to which high speed has to reach as soon as possible. It has done it to the rest of the autonomous communities and it has not done it there.”
“What for La Rioja – Cotelo added – was a sentence.” Of course, the Riojan representative was also happy for the Cantabrians, Basques and Extremadurans. “The truth is,” Cotelo continued, “that because of the PSOE we are now outside the trans-European network. And President Sánchez has not complied with the people of Rioja, since he promised in the campaign to advance the arrival of high speed to 2030 to 2030. The Rioja”. And, “if we are not fortunate enough to be on the list of priority territories, we are at a 2050 horizon at an absolute disadvantage compared to other communities, some of them neighboring.”
For all things, the senator has emphasized that “we Riojans only ask for what is fair, we do not want more than anyone else, but we do not want less either. And we want to be able to compete on equal terms with the rest of the communities and offer the same possibilities to Riojans.” and its visitors”. That is why she has stated that “we Riojans will never understand that a PSOE central government will once again turn us into second-class citizens.”
