A long -awaited dream
From my childhood, I have heard of the need to build the variant of Gandesa. This infrastructure was designed to improve traffic fluency and prevent heavy vehicles from crossing the village nucleus, a situation that affects both the road safety and the health of its inhabitants due to pollution and noise.
A quarter of a century of hope and frustration
On March 25, it will mark a symbolic moment: 25 years ago, the informative study on three variants of the N-420 road was published in the BOE, including Gandesa. This project, which should have been approved within eight months, spent seven years in a bureaucratic maze before receiving green light.
Incomplete promises and lost resources
During the first decade of 2000, the General State Budgets provided for significant amounts for these variants, but most were not executed. For example, in the 2009 budgets, almost 3.2 million euros were allocated for the Gandesa variant, but over time these games decreased until they disappeared.
The voice of local representatives
Miquel Aubà, the mayor who closely followed the development of the variant, was one of the first to denounce the lack of action of the governments. When he arrived in the Senate, he recorded initiatives to get to know the state of the project and tried to promote its construction, unsuccessfully.
A path full of obstacles
Between 2000 and 2017, Spanish governments allocated only € 334,000 to the Gandesa variant. The situation was further complicated when it was discovered that environmental impact statements had expired in January 2012 due to government inaction.
A new hope
In early 2018, Aubà filed a motion to update statements, but was not accepted. However, after a change in the presidency, he managed to meet with the new Secretary of State, who promised to restart the process.
A forgotten project in time
In January 2022, the Deputy Norma Pujol again emphasized the state of the project, but the Government’s response was disappointing: it had not been advanced at all, and the project needed a complete review to adapt to current regulations.
Comparisons that inconvenience
While the variant of Gandesa continues in an impasse, other projects, such as the AP-41 between Madrid and Toledo, have advanced at high speed. In just six years, this motorway was completed, while the Catalan variants are still without moving.
A call to action
In order to make their voices heard, the Alternativa Gandesa municipal group has requested that the consistory make an institutional statement to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the information study. The need to make visible the frustration of the community is more urgent than ever.
More than a project, a collective struggle
With the determination to continue the fight for the variant of Gandesa, we will continue to work with the same tenacity as its proponents have shown over the years. The community deserves an infrastructure that improves its quality of life and releases us from the weight of the traffic that surrounds us.
