Alberto Núñez Feijóo wants Pedro Sánchez to leave the Presidency of the Government before the general elections of November 29. He made this demand this Friday, barely 48 hours after the Urda (Toledo) railway accident, in which at least 69 people have died, and when exactly one month remains for Spaniards to return to the polls. The demand also extends to the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, but the PP leader has made it clear that he does not consider a change in the Ministry sufficient to consider the Government's political responsibilities resolved.
"Whoever has failed in their duty to manage the Ministry safely has to resign, and also whoever put him there," Feijóo declared after meeting with railway experts at the national headquarters of the PP. He then introduced a reference that explains much of his position: "If they do not resign, we will dismiss them at the polls".
If citizens are called to decide in 30 days, what is Feijóo seeking by asking Sánchez to leave before then?
Sánchez's resignation would not prevent the holding of the 29N elections
The first issue is institutional. The resignation of a head of government does not amount to the suspension of general elections that have already been called.
Article 101 of the Constitution establishes that the Government ceases, among other cases, due to the resignation of its president, and that the outgoing Executive remains in office until the new Government takes office.
Therefore, if Sánchez were to submit his resignation before November 29, the Government would become acting, but the electoral call would not automatically be annulled. The resignation would not necessarily alter the voting date or prevent the PSOE from standing in the election.
Nor would it allow the PP to access La Moncloa directly. Feijóo would have to wait for the electoral result and the corresponding investiture procedure to aspire to preside over the Government.
The demand for resignation thus has a fundamentally political scope. It seeks for Sánchez to assume responsibility before submitting to the electoral verdict, although that gesture would not replace the elections or by itself resolve who would govern afterward.
Feijóo does not want responsibility to end with Óscar Puente
The most significant change in the PP's discourse has occurred between Thursday and Friday.
During his visit to Urda, Feijóo called for political responsibility and questioned Puente's continuity, although he avoided expressly demanding his resignation. One day later he has broadened the request to the president of the Government and has rejected the idea that the crisis could be resolved with the departure of a single minister.
According to the Popular leader, Puente acts as a "fuse" that Sánchez keeps to prevent the political consequences of the accident from reaching the Presidency. That is the PP's interpretation of Moncloa's action, not an accredited government strategy.
The accusation comes, moreover, after Puente has put his post at Sánchez's disposal. According to the version conveyed this Friday by the minister's entourage, the president rejected his departure because he considered it "unfair".
That account offers Feijóo an additional argument. If Sánchez has personally intervened for Puente to continue, the PP can present the minister's remaining in office as a decision of the president and not solely as a matter of departmental responsibility.
The opposition thus tries to prevent a possible resignation of Puente from closing the political debate on Urda. Even if the minister were to leave Transport, Feijóo has already pointed to the one who appointed him and decided to keep him in office.
Calling for his resignation now also allows the debate to be taken to the polls
The closeness of the elections introduces a difference with respect to other Government crises. Feijóo does not need to call for an early election to demand a political change, because the elections are already set for 29 November.
His statement this Friday allows the resignation to be interpreted as a first demand and the polls as the way to resolve it if Sánchez does not comply. The PP does not have to choose between both positions: it can call for immediate accountability and, at the same time, ask voters to judge the performance of the Executive.
The accident thus enters the campaign not only as a railway management crisis, but also as a discussion about the political responsibility of the president.
The operation has, however, its limits. The technical investigation into the accident remains open and the circumstances that allowed an AVE to reach an Iryo stopped on the high-speed line still must be clarified. Feijóo attributes to the Government a deterioration in railway safety and the lack of renewal of systems that he considers obsolete, but those accusations do not amount to definitive conclusions by the investigators.
The Executive, for its part, maintains that it is necessary to clarify the causes before establishing specific responsibilities. Sánchez acknowledged this Friday that there is a "broken trust" in high speed and has promised solutions, while Moncloa maintains its support for Puente.
The disagreement is political, but it also affects the moment at which responsibilities must be demanded. Feijóo considers that they can be claimed before the investigation is concluded; the Government defends the continuity of its minister while the facts are being clarified.
The PP tries to turn the railway crisis into a debate about Sánchez's management
Feijóo has not limited himself to calling for resignations. After meeting with a group of railway infrastructure experts, he has announced some of the measures he would promote if he were to reach the Government.
Among them are the strengthening of Renfe and Adif's safety structures, prioritizing conservation work over new works, and a review of the problems detected in the network. The Popular leader has admitted that certain actions could temporarily affect railway service.
This announcement adds an electoral dimension to his intervention. The PP intends to accompany its demand for responsibilities with an alternative management proposal, although it will still have to specify the scope, funding, and deadlines of the announced measures.
It also broadens the field of confrontation. The debate is no longer limited to whether Puente should resign because of the accident and reaches the investment, maintenance, organization, and supervision decisions adopted during the years of Sánchez's Government.
The comparison with Adamuz, where 46 people died in January, reinforces the PP's political argument about the continuity of those responsible for the railway system. Both accidents add up to at least 115 deaths in 2026, although the temporal coincidence does not show that they share technical causes nor does it allow automatic attribution of the same political or administrative responsibility.
The risk of demanding resignations before all the causes are known
Feijóo's strategy also presents difficulties. Asking for the president's departure over an accident whose investigation remains open can cause the debate to shift from the railway deficiencies toward the political opportunity of formulating that demand in the middle of the pre-campaign.
The PP maintains that political responsibility does not need to wait for a sentence or a definitive technical report. That distinction has precedents in Spanish parliamentary practice, where resignations can occur over management decisions without there being criminal responsibility.
But calling for political responsibilities does not exempt one from justifying which concrete decisions are attributed to each responsible party. One thing is to question the supervision of the railway system and another to take for proven a causal relationship between the action of a minister or a president and the accident.
Feijóo will have to sustain that difference during the campaign, especially if the investigations incorporate new data that modify the initial reconstruction of the facts.
The opposition itself also cannot completely control the effect of its offensive. The resignation demands can increase pressure on the Executive, but also open a discussion about the electoral use of a recent tragedy. There are not sufficient elements to anticipate how voters will respond to that confrontation.