The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, plans to request his voluntary appearance before the Permanent Deputation of the Congress with the aim of offering details about the Urda railway accident (Toledo), in which more than 70 people have lost their lives.
Sources from the Ministry have confirmed the filing of this request after Sumar, Esquerra Republicana and Podemos formally demanded that the minister appear before the Deputation, the only parliamentary body operating in the Lower House after the dissolution of the Cortes due to the election advance.
Along with this appearance, still without a set date, the head of Transport will again appear before the media this Friday, October 30, in a press conference in which he intends to continue providing information with the utmost transparency about this disaster, the second high-speed accident recorded in Spain this year, after the one that occurred in Adamuz (Córdoba) last January.
An "inexplicable" accident in high-speed rail
On Wednesday, the day the disaster occurred, the minister already gave an initial press conference in which he detailed the initial causes of the collision, originated by the impact between a Renfe AVE train and another from Iryo, which remained stopped on the track as a result of the failure of a safety system.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has also spoken about what happened and has promised "firmness" if possible negligence is confirmed, warning that in a country like Spain it is not acceptable for accidents such as those of Adamuz and Urda to be repeated.
According to Puente, the disaster was triggered after an "inexplicable" order from Adif's control center, which authorized a Renfe AVE to resume its journey when on the same track an Iryo train remained stopped due to a computer failure.
The incident began at 8:30 a.m., when a computer problem caused the LZB safety system to go down on a 63-kilometer stretch. This failure activated the automatic stopping of six trains on that route, in line with the expected operation of the LZB.
Minutes later, the AVE driver informed Adif's control center that his train was stopped. At 8:36 a.m., the Adif controller authorized the Renfe train to resume movement at normal speed, despite the fact that the Iryo train was still stopped on the track. Seventeen minutes later the collision occurred.
"What has happened in the 17 minutes between when the order is given to depart for that train and the collision, we do not know precisely. It is truly... well, I do not want to go into qualifiers", Puente noted before the media.
Political and union criticism grows
The explanations offered by the minister have been considered insufficient by the majority of parliamentary groups. PP, Vox, Frente Amplio, Esquerra Republicana, PNV and Podemos have censured Puente for attributing responsibility for the tragedy to a worker at the Adif control center and have shown their rejection of the leak to various media outlets of the audio recordings with the communications between the control center and the train drivers.
Vox has filed a complaint against the minister before the Supreme Court, while Frente Amplio, ERC and Podemos have formally demanded his appearance before the Permanent Deputation so that he can expand on his explanations about what happened.
In the union sphere, the Railway Drivers' Union (Semaf) has lashed out against the Ministry's management and has demanded immediate measures so that the train "becomes safe again", recalling that, in its view, the LZB system should have been replaced long ago by more modern technology.
UGT, for its part, has denounced the dissemination of the audio recordings of the internal communications, while CCOO has directly called for Puente's dismissal and the launch of an "rigorous and transparent" investigation.