The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, has strongly criticized the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, for keeping the Minister of Transport and Mobility, Óscar Puente, in the Government after the Urda (Toledo) rail disaster, in which 69 people lost their lives.
"It seems to me something absolutely despicable in a democracy, not only on the part of Mr. Puente, but the responsibility of Mr. Sánchez, who is the one who keeps him. Here if there has been a human failure it has been the human failure of Mr. Sánchez to keep an incompetent team at the head of the Ministry of Transport," he said this Tuesday in an interview on "El programa de Ana Rosa" on Telecinco.
In the same appearance, he insisted that the Minister of Transport should have resigned after the railway accident recorded in Adamuz (Córdoba) last January. "It is inadmissible that after a second catastrophic accident like the one we have experienced, that neither the minister nor anyone has assumed a single responsibility," he asserted.
Likewise, Moreno denounced "the mistreatment toward Andalusians" by the central Government because of the lack of investment in infrastructure. He emphasized that the Andalusian railway network is "the only one that still maintains an obsolete safety system" and that "in eight and a half years only three and a half kilometers of new highway have been built in Andalucía, in a community that has a similar size to that of Portugal".
"I can think of no other explanation than that having European funds, the Next Generation, having resources, having capacity, they have not changed the safety system even though they could have done so since the year 2021 when that work was awarded. I cannot understand it unless there is negligence, incapacity and lack of will on the part of Mr. Sánchez's government," he stated.
Lastly, the Andalusian president has demanded urgent solutions from the Government in the face of the interruption of the railway connection with Andalucía, calling for a reinforcement of air frequencies and the setting of limits on ticket prices.