Pedro Sánchez can gain a few days by keeping Óscar Puente. What remains to be demonstrated is that that time works in favor of PSOE. After the tragedy in Urda, the president faces a decision that goes beyond the future of his minister: how to sustain the management of the emergency without turning the entire 29N campaign into a defense of his continuity.
The reports published this Sunday describe an immediate strategy, although they do not certify an agreed outcome. Puente is preparing a railway safety package for Tuesday’s Council of Ministers and the overall mainstream media holds that Sánchez asked him to remain in office when he raised his resignation after the accident. On Puente’s part there is a decision to resist and no confirmation of a postponed resignation.
The risk for PSOE is that this wait produces three simultaneous effects: increasingly compromising the president, mobilizing the party around the defense of the minister, and reducing the visibility of the actions with which Sánchez is trying to convey that the Government is controlling the situation.
More so, the party base is not the electorate: defending Puente may distance those who voted for PSOE in 2023, the critical segment Sánchez needs.
Puente is not just any minister within socialism. His identification with Sánchez and his willingness to confront adversaries had made him an asset for mobilizing the bases. Different federations were calling for his presence in the campaign before the accident. That ability to awaken support explains part of the difficulty of his replacement.
But what unites the militants most identified with a leader does not necessarily convince the whole of his voters. The party base may interpret Puente’s continuity as resistance against the right. A progressive voter may view exactly the same decision as a refusal to assume consequences and end up evaporating any result of minimum endurance by the socialists on 29N.
The problem, moreover, appears when the most mobilized sector turns any criticism of the minister into a sign of hostility toward PSOE. A citizen may reject PP and Vox, support public services and at the same time demand that the head of Transport step down. If he receives in response a disqualification or a demand for loyalty, the party will be making it harder for him to keep feeling represented.
That mechanism could push a part of the progressive electorate toward abstention and open an opportunity for the PP among those who prioritize management. The president of GAD3 already advanced today that a "voting revolution" is coming.
In addition, the organization itself is divided. There is both support for Puente's explanations and internal criticism that he presented his future as a «calvary». Some leaders considered that expression improperly shifted the focus from the victims to the minister's suffering.
The militant defense can reproduce that error: ending up talking more about the treatment Puente receives than about the guarantees citizens need. Personal solidarity with a leader is not enough as an institutional response to a tragedy.
The noise around Puente can overshadow the Sánchez who is on the ground
Sánchez has visited the site of the accident, has participated in emergency coordination meetings and has committed to actions to clarify what happened and reinforce safety.
However, those actions compete with a controversy that the president himself keeps open: why Puente continues and until when.
There lies one of the contradictions of the strategy. Sánchez may be exercising command on the ground and, at the same time, remain politically in the background because the conversation revolves around his minister. Every intervention devoted to defending Puente's continuation offers less room to explain care for those affected, administrative coordination or safety decisions.
The problem worsens if the most visible messages from supporters focus on championing the minister and attacking those who are calling for his departure. That defense may end up eclipsing precisely the image of authority and responsibility that the president desperately needs to project to avoid electoral debacle.
Confusion also affects the role of each person. Puente must explain what happened in his department. Sánchez must establish the criteria by which the Government's response will be evaluated, including responsibilities. If the only account of socialism is to justify the minister's continuity, the president loses the necessary distance to present himself as the one who leads and demands results. Worse still: by hinting at one point at his interest in succeeding Pedro Sánchez in the future, it is a matter of days, perhaps hours, for that defense to be confused with a struggle for leadership of the PSOE after the elections or even a pointing out of a successor by Sánchez of Puente.
A possible operational error does not close political responsibility
Faced with public indignation over the singling out of railway staff, the only argument -which also shows a very risky excess of calculation- for keeping the minister is continuity. Transport must coordinate actions, provide information, and implement measures while what happened is being investigated. Replacing its top official in the middle of an emergency can add difficulties.
However, Puente's defense loses strength when it seeks to settle the debate over responsibilities in advance. The investigation remains open and considers organizational and procedural factors, in addition to breakdowns and operational actions. Added to this is the possible new judicial front for the PSOE -and so it goes- over the leak of the audio recordings of the tragedy, in what seems like a desperate attempt to 'save' the ministry's and Government's actions in Transport.
The excess of rationality has a cost: a resignation does not automatically amount to a confession of guilt. And appearing before journalists, although necessary, does not by itself exhaust accountability.
Waiting for an investigation also requires specifying which one and with what scope. An internal review does not replace the independent technical and judicial investigations. Nor can it be taken for granted that its conclusions will be available before the elections.
Each day of support makes it harder to separate Sánchez from Puente
Moncloa fears that an immediate departure will reinforce the thesis that the Government's management caused the tragedy. It also considers it necessary for Puente to explain the department's actions.
It is an understandable logic, but it has an accumulative cost. Each ratification turns the minister’s permanence into a more personal decision by the president. If, in the end, an exit occurs without new facts to explain it, Sánchez will also have to answer why he postponed it.
Unconditional defense can also reduce his margin within the party. The more Puente is presented as a victim of an unfair campaign, the harder it will be later to explain his departure to those who have been mobilized to support him.
For that reason, the president runs the risk of being trapped between two audiences: those who consider a resignation essential and those who would interpret that resignation as a surrender. The excess of calculation would consist of feeding both expectations to avoid choosing, while uncertainty consumes the campaign.
Puente’s past, with Adamuz and the collapse of the railway structure, furthermore makes it completely impossible for him to restore confidence in the railway.
Renouncing the elections and staying in command: a possible exit, with limits
There is an intermediate formula: for Puente to announce his withdrawal from the candidacy and remain temporarily at the head of Transport. It would make it possible to assume a personal political cost without imposing an immediate replacement during the crisis.
It could help distinguish between the urgent management and the minister’s future continuity, although it would be a political harakiri for the socialists: whoever announces his departure may lose authority, even if he is already at rock bottom, to promote changes that others will have to carry out. Possibly not even from his party. In that line, the little importance that the social majority has attributed to the possible cut of the Madrid-Barcelona AVE, a critical and strategic artery of Spain, is understood. It is evident that the electorate smells change and the Minister of Transport has little legitimacy for announcements years ahead.
Furthermore, withdrawing a candidacy and leaving the Government are different decisions. DEMÓCRATA already explained it: the legislation contemplates withdrawals from electoral lists, while the Government Law establishes that the Executive continues in office after the elections until the swearing-in of the next one. Puente could continue in Transport after 29N even if he had renounced being a deputy, although without any kind of authority and even more so after the tragedy and an electoral defeat.
That Puente should personally announce his resignation would have political significance and would allow his career to be recognized without a public break with Sánchez. But institutional responsibility would still correspond to the president, on whose proposal ministers are appointed and dismissed.
And there is also no guarantee of electoral recovery: for those who judge the response of the Government as a whole, changing a candidacy may prove insufficient.
The replacement of Adif cannot replace an explanation of responsibilities
ABC publishes that the Government is preparing the departure of the president of Adif, Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña, and calculates when to announce it. According to that newspaper, the move would serve to relieve the pressure on Puente and Sánchez.
Beyond how the Comunidad DEMÓCRATA indicated today it would be a crude way to look for a scapegoat, it would be perceived only as a way to protect the minister and would not even shift the discussion one step downward.
Sánchez is moreover doing himself a disservice here and is being little strategic: the administrative structure has continuity and the main posts have their own appointment and dismissal procedures. Therefore a broad renewal would be a decision that would speak of institutional solidity of the department's technicians and civil servants in the face of the certain fact of the destruction within it due to political appointments. A general renewal with Puente at the head would allow Sánchez to refocus the debate and shift the political responsibility for its implosion onto the Minister of Transport.
The stability of the department is a valid argument. Presenting its head as irreplaceable weakens the entire Government: an essential public service must be able to function also when its political leadership changes.
The PP can talk about management while the PSOE keeps talking about Puente
The Demócrata aggregate closed on October 27 offered a previous reference to the accident: 134 seats for the PP, 108 for the PSOE and 67 for Vox. That snapshot does not measure the reaction to Urda nor does it show a later punishment.
The opportunity of the PP that it has known how to take advantage of clearly is to turn the controversy over Puente into a discussion about governing capacity. Feijóo's management and experience approach, every day gains ground and finds space while the PSOE dedicates its digital incursions to defending its minister. For Vox, continuity could fuel its discourse of rupture with the Executive.
But Sánchez has an additional difficulty: he needs to regain trust outside the circle that already supports him. The applause for Puente within that circle may offer a sense of resistance while the distance grows with those who are waiting for decisions.
Tuesday will be a concrete test. The security package must allow measures, deadlines, and those responsible to be assessed. Puente will also appear before the Permanent Deputation of the Congress.
Keeping him may be defensible during the emergency. Turning his permanence into a cause of the party may end up being much more costly. If the militant defense of the minister ends up eclipsing the actions of the president and monopolizing his explanations, Sánchez will have gained time in the Government at the cost of losing it in the campaign.
He can have Puente take the blame. The decision about how long he should keep doing so, and under what conditions, will remain his.