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Spanish Congress decides the Development Minister should stay
By m.p. - Nov 27, 2007 - 11:37 PM
ALSO SEE : • More than 300,000 travel high speed Madrid-Barcelona - Mar 19, 2008 - 9:54 PM
• Top speed on high speed trains at Málaga Renfe yards - Mar 11, 2008 - 11:43 AM

The Development Minister, Magdalena Álvarez. Photo – EFE.
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Magdalena Álvarez escaped an IU/ICV motion for dismissal by just three votes
The Development Minister, Magdalena Álvarez, escaped a motion for dismissal by just three votes in Congress on Tuesday, in a proposal by the Izquierda Unida-ICV grouping that she should go over the problems on the railway service in Barcelona. The vote in the lower chamber came just hours after the Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Victor Morlán, announced that Barcelona’s Cercanías local train network will be back to normal service this Saturday, after more than a month of disruption caused by work on the AVE high speed line.

The Development Ministry says Barcelona’s local trains network will be back to normal this Saturday. Photo – EFE.
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Tuesday’s vote was, at the request of the opposition Partido Popular, public, where every member of parliament present in the chamber spoke their yea or nay on whether the Minister should go. The yea votes came from the Partido Popular, the Catalan parties CiU and ERC, Coalición Canaria, and IU/ICV themselves.

The governing Socialists were supported by the Basque Nationalist party, PNV, the BNG Galicia Nationalists, the Aragón party Chunta Aragonesista, and Nueva Canarias. The former Partido Popular MP for Valencia, Joaquín Calomarde, who resigned and passed over to the Grupo Mixto this April, also gave his support to the Minister. El Mundo said there were mutterings of ‘traitor’ from his former colleagues.

It was a full session on Tuesday, with just seven MPs absent for the vote. The Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, arrived with Magdalena Álvarez, who is the sixth government Minister to have been subject to such a vote in the current legislature. The others include the Economy Minister, Pedro Solbes, the Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, and, for the Interior, José Antonio Alonso.


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