The president of the PP of Andalusia, Juanma Moreno, has called ahead of the upcoming general elections for “the dignity, respect and justice toward the victims” of the railway accidents that occurred in Andalusia to be kept “very much in mind.” “If the Socialist Government intends for us to forget those 115 people who have lost their lives, their respective families, and dozens of people who have been left with serious physical and psychological traumas, you are very much mistaken,” he said.
Moreno, who intervened at an event held in Benalmádena (Málaga) together with the president of the Autonomous City of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, and the deputy secretary for Regional, Local Policy and Electoral Analysis of the PP and candidate for Málaga, Elías Bendodo, emphasized that on November 29 “it is time to assess Sánchez’s Government.” “I am going to move Rome with Santiago so that the truth is known,” he said.
In his remarks, he referred to the investigation opened to clarify whether the European funds “have been used to replace the obsolete LZB safety system with a system that the whole of Europe has and, incidentally, the whole of Spain except the South Corridor” and he criticized that “corruption in our country and in Spain has reached that level too.”
For the leader of the PP-A, “that alone should already deserve reproach and therefore the greatest electoral punishment by the whole of the citizens,” stressing that “it is not normal and we cannot assume as normal that two accidents occur on the railway corridor that connects Madrid with Andalusia, two on high-speed rail; it is not normal for Spain to be the country in the world with the highest mortality rate due to railway accidents.”
“Things have happened there, there has been negligence and there has been a deficiency,” Moreno reiterated, who said that after the Adamuz incident, the minister Óscar Puente “already should have resigned” and “they already should have started analyzing what problems there were.”
He also recalled that, when the railway unions warned that in this corridor "there was an incident every two days for nine months, the responsibility of a government would have been to review it, guarantee safety". "And they didn't do it. When someone doesn't assume responsibilities, when someone doesn't look at where the problems are, when someone turns a blind eye, what has happened happens. That's why we have had this tragic accident," he said, regretting that Andalusia continues without a connection to Madrid and the "million-dollar economic impact" resulting from this situation.
For that reason, he has asked that "when we get to day 29 November, we take the victims into account". "This isn't about using it, and much less so," he stressed, insisting that his aim is "to know the truth". He highlighted the "sensitivity" of having stayed in contact with the families, "while others haven't had it", and of having attended the funerals, "something others could have done".
Moreno referred to the pain of the relatives and assured: "As long as I am president of the Junta de Andalucía, as long as I have breath after seeing what I have seen, I am going to move Rome with Santiago so that the truth is known, so that those people have the right to know what happened, why they had an accident, why they lost a loved one. They have every right to know it and so do we, so that it never happens again."
He also emphasized that "it could have happened to anyone" and reiterated the need to "prevent it from happening again". "And if there are those responsible, let them pay as they have to pay, because that's also what justice is for," he concluded.