The Sindicato Profesional Independiente de Controladores Aéreos (SPICA) has shown "its strongest rejection" of the disclosure of the conversations held between the AVE and Renfe drivers and the Iryo train and the Adif control post in Atocha, recorded moments before the Urda (Toledo) rail accident.
Through a public statement, the trade union organization has requested that the Independent Administrative Authority for the Technical Investigation of Railway, Maritime and Civil Aviation Accidents and Incidents (AITAT), as well as the competent authorities, act to stop the circulation of these records, with the aim of safeguarding the technical investigation and the dignity of the victims and their relatives.
SPICA has warned that this leak, which it has described as "partial and decontextualized," harms both the official investigations and the position of the professionals involved and the people affected by the accident.
Likewise, the union has emphasized that the dissemination of these excerpts in different media has occurred "without guarantees of reliability," since it is unknown whether the material is complete, the actual chronological order of the exchanged messages, and the specific operational framework in which each conversation took place.
For this reason, the organization has called for those who ordered or allowed the publication of this confidential material to be located so that the corresponding responsibilities can be clarified.
In this regard, SPICA considers it "inacceptable" to use communications of a professional nature to build a narrative of guilt, recalling that 'Annex 13' of the International Civil Aviation Organization (OACI) and European Regulation 996/2010 protect this type of records to prevent their use outside the sphere of technical analysis and preserve the principles of "just culture".
The union has also expressed "deep concern" over the silence of AITAT, which has neither censured the leak nor reminded of the duty of confidentiality governing the evidence in this file.
SPICA claims after the leak
Among its demands, the union calls for the competent authority to halt the dissemination of the recordings in accordance with the current regulations and victim care protocols; for the responsibilities of those who may have leaked the material to be clarified and assumed; and for AITAT to publicly condemn what happened, defending the confidential nature of its investigations.
Likewise, SPICA urges institutions to respect technical independence, avoiding jumping to conclusions or pointing to culprits, and asks the media to refrain from fueling conjecture until verified information on the causes of the incident is available.