Renfe Mercancías, the Spanish national rail freight operator, will soon be partly taken over by MSC. This initiative led to speculations that the company might disappear, leaving Spain without a state-owned company. However, Renfe recently denied these allegations, stating that “Renfe Mercancías is not going to be dissolved and that it will continue to be a company within the Group”.

At the end of September, the Spanish company chose MSC and its rail freight subsidiary Medlog to assume control of 50 per cent of Renfe Mercancías. This proposal must now be approved by the Spanish Delegate Commission for Economic Affairs and Council of Ministers, as Renfe specified. The company claimed that this step will not affect the current workforce. “The project contemplates offering a job guarantee to 100 per cent of Renfe Mercancías workers, either by joining the new project or by joining Renfe”, they added.

A complicated winter for the Spanish rail sector

Other than MSC’s partial takeover of Mercancías, the situation around Renfe is heating up also on the Catalonyan front. Here, the country’s infrastructure manager Adif is working to give up control of Rodalies de Catalonya, the main commuter and regional rail system in the region, to the autonomous Government of Catalonya. A similar trend would then follow for Renfe Mercancías. Neither project was well-received by the public nor the railway workforce. The latter was ready for a five-day strike at the end of November, which was avoided only by the intervention of the Minister of Transport Oscar Puente.

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