Publisher: The Tag

All the socialist governments of this century, from Zapatero to Sánchez, have had the same general director of traffic, an engineer determined to reduce accidents through the procedure of maximum reduction in speed and the number of cars, a method certainly much more … cheaper than expanding or renewing the road and keeping it in good condition. Pere Navarro Olivella belongs to the Ministry of the Interior, but his persecutory voracity – sorry, I meant collection – provides great services to the Treasury: 540 million in 2024 for road fines, theoretically intended for security and prevention although the Court of Auditors has expressed some reservations on this subject. And now he’s just dictated – literally – another controversial decision.

The now famous v16 tag, which becomes mandatory from today, will result in additional income of between 250 and 300 million VAT. Not bad for an experiment whose effectiveness turns out to be, as ZP would say, questionable and contested. Doubts remain about its visibility in adverse weather conditions and about its effective connectivity in a mobile fleet largely lacking – due to its age – the necessary technology. The device costs between 40 and 60 euros and people, of very bad thinking nature, have indulged in all kinds of suspicions; the main one, that of a matter of rights holder as little explained as its alleged urgency.

Because it turns out that the measure was adopted by royal decree, thus avoiding the reform of the law to avoid the corresponding vote in Congress. This means that the government has prevented legislators from debating the impact of geolocation on citizens’ privacy and has actually increased the tax burden through a simple technical regulation. It also happens that Spain is the only country on the planet where the possession of this equipment has been imposed, ordered and commanded, as a precept of obligatory compliance. At least the bottle cap nonsense, another one of those irritatingly bureaucratic arrangements, complied with a European Parliament directive and didn’t cost us any money.

These are the kinds of issues that cause disaffection with politics and politicians. In a society of open debate, it is not possible to make arbitrary decisions on a whim. And in this case, not even under the environmental umbrella, the usual umbrella of anti-automotive prejudice. Distrust of institutions is not just the result of excessive noise, polarization, or bigotry; Rules of this type have a lot to do with it, lacking transparency, justification and even meaning but implemented with an air of enlightened superiority that closely resembles authoritarianism. And they sow the seeds of a conflictual civic uprooting in the deep layers of public opinion.

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