Óscar Puente is preparing a response to the railway crisis that, for now, involves continuing in office and presenting new security measures. According to El País, the Minister of Transport will bring a plan to strengthen high-speed rail protection and restore confidence after the Urda accident to the Council of Ministers this Tuesday.
The initiative will come on a decisive day for his political continuity. According to the newspaper, Puente will explain the package at the press conference after the Council of Ministers and then will appear before the Permanent Deputation of Congress, where he will have to respond to the opposition’s and several parliamentary allies’ demands for explanations and resignation.
Pedro Sánchez’s backing remains the minister’s main support. But that support has not closed the debate within the Government: El País, as well as Demócrata yesterday, reports conflicting opinions between those who consider it essential to keep him at the head of the response and those who believe his permanence will be difficult to sustain.
A security plan to respond to the trust crisis
According to El País, Puente has been working since Friday with his collaborators and technical teams on a package that will be finalized over the weekend and on Monday. The objective is to offer a concrete response to the loss of confidence in the railway system that the Prime Minister himself has acknowledged.
The information does not yet detail the actions, their budget, or the implementation schedule. What it does advance is the intention to present a broad plan to strengthen security and make it the axis of the Government’s response.
The strategy combines explanations about what happened with decisions to prevent new accidents. According to the newspaper’s account, Sánchez has asked Puente to stay on and provide solutions, while other Government projects, the so-called «social Tuesdays», are temporarily relegated by the railway emergency.
Doubts about the resignation are also inside the Government
The discussion about Puente’s future is no longer limited to the demands of the PP, Vox or the parliamentary allies. Several media outlets today quote members of the Executive and Socialist leaders who consider that two fatal accidents in nine months require taking political responsibility.
“It is two accidents in a year, and he said the other time that this could not happen again. It is very difficult for him to be able to continue. Nothing can not happen,” says a member of the Government consulted by the newspaper.
Other members of the Executive maintain the opposite position. According to the same newspaper, they argue that there is no proven negligence on the part of the minister and that his immediate departure would be unfair, would make crisis management more difficult, and could be interpreted as an admission of responsibility.
Sánchez does not want to convey the idea of "guilt"
Let us remember that Puente himself last Friday indicated that the president asked him to remain in the post and defend his management, according to that information. That instruction helps explain the position that Puente conveyed publicly on Friday, when he assured that leaving would have been the easiest option for him, but that it was not what Sánchez had asked of him.
According to elDiario.es, Moncloa considers that an immediate resignation would have left the department in charge of facing the crisis without political direction and would have conveyed a message of guilt that the Executive rejects.
“We are convinced that he is the ideal person to explain and defend this,” sources from Moncloa cited by the medium maintain.
Indignation over the debate on human error and management responsibility
The minister's continuity is also linked to how the failures that preceded the accident are explained. In an article in El Confidencial it joins today the thesis that has most outraged the Spanish population these days: how the debate can be reduced to the action of a worker at the control center.
His approach distinguishes between the possible immediate error and the conditions of the system in which it occurs: the functioning of automatic protections, alternative procedures, training, experience, and the workload of those who must intervene when technology fails.
The medium echoes union criticism about those conditions and maintains that, if organizational deficiencies were proven, the examination of responsibilities would also have to reach management.
The analysis reflects one of the political difficulties that Puente faces: explanations about the circulation orders do not by themselves resolve the questions about why the initial protection failed and what mechanisms had to prevent a later error from ending in a collision.
Sánchez's backing continues, but it does not clear all scenarios
All the media point out that even some of those convinced that Puente will remain until the elections admit that the situation could change. The evolution of the investigation and political and social pressure are the factors that, according to those sources, can alter the scenario.
The tragedy forces the PSOE to rethink the 29N campaign
According to El País, the accident has forced Sánchez's team to review the tone and timing of the election campaign. The strategy based on optimism has been displaced by mourning, security demands, and the debate over responsibilities.
The newspaper reports that various Socialist leaders consider the comeback more difficult, although they avoid taking the electoral impact of the tragedy as closed. Their assessment is that it is still too early to determine how public opinion will evolve.
In that context, Tuesday's plan will have a dual dimension: it will have to provide answers about railway safety and will be the main political initiative of a minister whose continuity still divides his own camp.