The president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, pointed this Friday directly at Pedro Sánchez and the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, for the political responsibilities arising from the railway accidents of Adamuz (Córdoba) and Urda (Toledo). After meeting with his committee of experts in security and infrastructure, the opposition leader appeared at a press conference to demand explanations for two tragedies that occurred in just nine months and that have left 115 dead.
"Whoever has failed in their duty to manage the Ministry of Transport seriously has to bear it; and whoever appointed him and kept him on, all the more so", Feijóo stated, placing the horizon of political responsibilities in the general elections next 29 November: "If they do not resign, we will remove them at the ballot box".
The Popular leader especially questioned Puente's continuity, whom he defined as a "firebreak" at the service of the Prime Minister, who intends to "keep that fuse so that the fire does not reach his responsibility". "In Spain there is no room for ministers like Óscar Puente. It is not possible. And, in my opinion, there is also no room for Prime Ministers like Pedro Sánchez", he added.
Two accidents, the same political responsibilities
Feijóo recalled that the officials of the Ministry of Transport and the Government when the Adamuz accident occurred remain in their posts after the Urda disaster. "46 people have died because of deficient maintenance by the Government in Adamuz and at least 69 in Toledo because the Government did not renew an obsolete safety system when it should have done so", he denounced, attributing to the Executive responsibilities that the investigations will have to clarify.
The PP president rejected the idea that the Toledo tragedy could be reduced to human error or to an isolated incident. He considers it "cowardly and immoral" to single out a single operator when, according to him, the different layers of security have failed. "The tragedy cannot be turned into a plan of harassment and demolition against an operator", he warned.
He also lamented the leak of the deceased train driver's audio recordings, questioning that his family may have been able to hear his voice publicly even before collecting his mortal remains.
In his view, the Urda accident constitutes "the dramatic final straw that overflows a glass that had been filling up for too long with incidents, breakdowns, delays, warnings and, for now, 115 dead".
The European funds and the pending renewal of the security system
One of the matters on which Feijóo has demanded explanations is the lack of renewal of the security system of the Madrid-Seville line, despite the existence of a 2021 contract to modernize the signaling and implement the European ERTMS system, with Community financing.
The Popular Party leader has asked to investigate why an old system, the LZB, continues operating, and why the planned actions had not been completed when the Urda accident occurred. The technical investigation must determine whether the pending modernization could have prevented or mitigated the crash.
"It is necessary to know how many failures there have been, why they were not solved and why a Government that has squandered on advisers has decided to save on safety," he noted.