Antich's PSOE were in alliance with the centrist UM and the so-called Bloc that was further to the left than PSOE. There were tensions between the UM and the Bloc. On one specific area of policy, transport, it was the PSM Mallorcan Socialists who were chiefly at loggerheads with the UM.
Soon after the 2007 election, the Majorca Daily Bulletin ran an article which explained that the period in office would be hallmarked by being known as 'The Age of the Train'. With hindsight, this was to ultimately sound unfortunate, given the allusion to Jimmy Savile. But at the time it seemed appropriate. Even Antich himself came out with an expression roughly the same (albeit not in English).
The railways were to be a Big Thing of Antich's second presidency. The two main projects were the reopening of the Manacor-Arta line and the extension from Sa Pobla to Alcudia. The funding for both was put in place. The PSOE Spanish Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was all in favour; it was the Spanish Government's money.
We all know of course that neither project got off the ground. This wasn't because of the financial crisis, although austerity under the Partido Popular from 2011 did lead to the scrapping of the Manacor-Arta project. By 2011, Sa Pobla-Alcudia was already a distant memory. It went by the board in 2009, a key factor having been the UM-PSM disagreements. The PSM were in charge of transport. The UM weren't in favour of the ministry's favoured route for the rail extension, largely because the UM at Alcudia Town Hall weren't in favour.
Antich tried to talk the leader of the UM, Miquel Àngel Flaquer, into accepting the ministry's route. The effort was fruitless. Alcudia were dead against it (the mayor was from the UM), and so the whole project collapsed and the Spanish Government withdrew the funding. The Antich Age of the Train was to be nothing of the sort.
In 2025, we have a situation whereby the current government's mobility ministry is in the process of drawing up tenders for the first contracts for various rail schemes. Alcudia and Arta are two of these. No date has been given as to when these tenders might be issued.
It is quite feasible that the projects could have gone ahead when Antich was president. That they didn't owed much to the nature of his coalition.
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