The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has defended the need to rethink the model of the railway system in Spain, although he has admitted that, in the current context, that shift is not very viable due to a "complicated" political dynamic in which "no one wants to give up."
"Do I think the railway model should be reviewed? Yes. Being realistic, is this possible? The political dynamic is very complicated," he said during his appearance this Tuesday, requested by himself, before the Standing Committee of the Congress. In this session, he gave an account of his management following the Urda (Toledo) railway accident of October 28, 2026, in which 69 people lost their lives. At the end of his remarks, he announced his resignation as minister and his decision not to stand on the PSOE lists in the next elections.
The head of Transport regretted the ongoing changes in criteria depending on who governs in each administration. "Governments change in the cities, in the autonomous communities, in the central government. Those who said one thing in opposition, on one side, when they come to Government, do what they can, surely, but in opposition they said something else," he explained.
In this context, he called for "a cold reflection" on priorities in railway matters and stressed that "no one wants to give up" either high-speed rail or the undergrounding works in their territory—actions that, only in the case of the undergrounding works, would entail a cost of 40,000 million euros.
"Who gives up? Is there any city that says 'We will give up the undergrounding, we are going to do a soft integration'? None. And since, besides, decisions are not made in an objective way and now everything is the same, but suddenly someone comes and says 'Well, here yes and here no.' Well of course, there is always comparative harm against which it is impossible to argue," he warned.
For this reason, he urged the establishment of a common framework that will serve all projects. He calls for the creation of a uniform and transparent technical criterion: "Because there hasn’t been one. And that is everyone’s responsibility," he criticized.
At another point in his appearance, Puente has defended the budgetary effort for conservation and maintenance carried out under the governments of Pedro Sánchez. He has emphasized that the rail network cannot evolve “from 0 to 100 overnight,” referring to the jump from a budgetary execution of around 30% in 2016 to approximately 90% ten years later, according to his own calculations. “We come from years of deep divestment, of very low budget execution,” he warned.
“Under my term, and I’m not saying it’s my merit, record execution percentage targets have been reached,” he stressed, contrasting these figures with those of the governments of the Partido Popular, when “investments have been very low, the degree of budget execution has been very low and the neglect has been total.” “This is the reality,” he reiterated.
Working conditions at Adif’s control center
In the final part of his appearance, the minister referred to the working conditions of the staff at Adif’s control center, after being questioned about how they could influence the performance of their duties.
“I have heard many lies about the situation of the workers. Some have described a kind of Dantean situation in which they cannot even get up to go to the bathroom, that they are paid very badly, and so on,” he began by pointing out.
Next, he detailed that an M1 operator —the category of the worker who was on duty at the time of the incident— receives a total gross compensation of more than 52,000 euros per year, which, as he indicated, equals between 2,500 and 3,000 euros net per month.
“Is that a lot? Is that little? Surely it’s little. Because surely all trades, and especially these, are badly paid. But they’re not 1,200 or 1,600 euros,” he clarified, thereby refuting the figures circulated by some media outlets.
He also specified that the employee was in the first two hours of their shift and returned after four days of rest, with a working day of 37 hours per week.
Lastly, Puente has acknowledged that he does not know whether “there was any circumstance within that person’s work environment that could have led them to make an incorrect decision,” and he reiterated that it will be the judicial authority that determines the causes of the accident.