The Executive of the Community of Madrid, presided over by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has demanded this Friday the resignation of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and of the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, as a result of the Urda (Toledo) railway accident, in which 69 people have died and there are more than a hundred injured.
In the press conference after the Governing Council, the spokesperson and Councillor for Presidency, Justice and Local Administration, Miguel Ángel García Martín, has been blunt in calling for political responsibilities for this event and for the previous railway accident recorded in Adamuz.
"The excuses have already run out for him and they must leave politics forever. They owe it to the 115 deceased and to their relatives from the last two railway accidents in our country," García Martín pointed out, who announced that the Governing Council has also approved an institutional declaration to demand that the causes of the accident be fully clarified.
The spokesperson lashed out against the management of the head of Transport and underlined that Puente "should never have been Minister of Transport" because, according to what he denounced, he is "more attentive" to his social networks and to "insulting other political rivals" than to the proper management of the Spanish railway system.
García Martín also extended responsibility to the head of the central Executive, recalling that it was Pedro Sánchez who chose Óscar Puente and, before him, the former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos, sentenced to 24 years for crimes of criminal organization, bribery, embezzlement and influence peddling in the "masks case".
The spokesperson also reproached that "Sánchez left and allowed characters like Koldo to be able to be on the boards of directors of Renfe (...) Pedro Sánchez and Óscar Puente cannot continue even one minute more in politics, I insist, they owe it to the victims and they owe it to their families", insisting that both must assume the consequences of what happened.
During his intervention, the representative of the Madrid Government emphasized the "damage that has been done to Spain" and the "loss of confidence of Spaniards" in the safety of the railway network, which in his view has been seriously called into question after the two accidents.
According to García Martín, the Urda accident "could have been avoided if note had been taken of the Adamuz catastrophe and therefore the appropriate measures had been taken", stressing that this new accident "is nothing more than the consequence of spending many years without investment, without budgets, without management".
To conclude, the spokesperson wanted to make a special mention of one of the victims of the collision between the Iryo and the Ave train, by highlighting "in a singular way" the former Minister of Employment and Social Security Fátima Báñez, who was traveling in the private convoy and died in the accident.