Strike Day for Alicante's Interurban Bus Service This Thursday

The company committee of Automóviles La Alcoyana has officially announced that the planned strike for this Thursday, May 29, will go ahead. The strike coincides with the plenary session of the Alicante City Council as a response, according to its promoters, to the "lack of concrete progress by the competent administrations and the company itself." They also add what they perceive as a "progressive deterioration of the public transport service" in Alicante's capital and its metropolitan area, calling for "real solutions."

The organisers emphasize that since the beginning of the conflict, "this committee has maintained constant dialogue with the Ministry of Mobility, the Alicante City Council, and various opposition political groups - Compromís, PSOE, and Esquerra Unida Podem - in the affected municipalities." These groups, they add, "have expressed their concern about the state of the service and have shown their support for a structural solution."

In this regard, they stress that this "support" will translate into motions and proposals in upcoming municipal plenary sessions in Alicante, Sant Vicent del Raspeig, Mutxamel, El Campello, and Sant Joan d'Alacant, as well as in the Valencian Parliament, "where the urgent creation of a metropolitan entity will be demanded to ensure coordinated, efficient, and sustainable public transport management, with quality and continuity standards."

The Ministry has recently announced a temporary expansion of the service starting June 1, which, during the summer schedule (from June 1 to September 30), includes the addition of three extra buses on line 24, three more on line 23, and one on line 21, the committee recalled.

However, they continued, "these measures are clearly insufficient to reverse the current precariousness" and "this expansion is limited until December 31 and conditioned on the abolition of the free pass for minors from July 1, as well as a restructuring of transport tickets."

They criticize that "it has not been clarified whether the new passes will apply exclusively to interurban lines, which could exclude a large part of the citizenry. Nor has the continuity of the 50 percent discount on other passes been guaranteed. All this creates uncertainty for both users and workers," they argue.

According to the company committee, "no visible investments have been made in renewal or technical or human reinforcements, which further aggravates the situation" and "this scenario is compounded by the refusal of the region's municipalities to assume the implementation of a metropolitan entity."

At this point, they point out that Alicante's Mobility Councillor, Carlos de Juan, has argued "a lack of economic resources to undertake shared management." This stance, in the view of the workforce, "is disappointing and shifts the burden of a problem that requires immediate institutional solutions onto the citizens and workers."

"However, both the Alicante City Council and the Ministry of Transport have conveyed their intention to extend the collaboration agreement that supports the current tenders. Therefore, there are no real impediments to the creation of the metropolitan entity: only political will and coordinated work are needed to make it possible," they concluded.

For all these reasons, the committee has explained that they maintain the strike on May 29 "as the only effective pressure tool to demand real commitments, urgent investments, and definitive solutions that guarantee a dignified, accessible, and sustainable public transport."

Similarly, they reaffirm "the need for the concession's rescue as a structural and definitive measure, in order to guarantee public, efficient management focused on the general interest."