PP and Vox have reiterated this Tuesday in Congress that, even admitting that it is not "sufficient," the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, must leave office due to the rail accident from last week in Urda (Toledo), in which 69 people have died and numerous injuries have been reported. Both parties have underlined that the tragedy occurs just nine months after the January disaster in Adamuz (Córdoba). By contrast, the Government's parliamentary partners, although they maintain their criticisms, have opted for a more moderate tone than in previous days.
In the Permanent Deputation, the PP spokesperson, Ester Muñoz, has reproached the minister for saying, "How well he is able to explain why people die on trains, and how badly he is able to prevent people from dying on trains," accusing him of wanting to "cynically confuse public overexposure with taking responsibility" and of having spent nine months acting as if the Adamuz accident had not existed, without making decisions.
Muñoz has gone so far as to describe him as "negligent, frivolous, incompetent and incapable of empathizing with other people's pain," has branded his management as "nauseating," and has confronted him about "how many phones were ringing desperately" in the stricken carriages in Urda while he "was with his team building a narrative and filtering audios." In her view, "Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. It isn't a one-off failure; it's systemic. And it's not a coincidence; it's the causal outcome of all his decisions, his actions, and his omissions," holding him responsible for not having yet implemented a new safety system when "the old one suffers constant falls," for ignoring the warnings from the CIAF, and for putting "safety behind his interests, raising speed to 350 kilometers in order to make a video giving a pin to his colleagues."
From Vox, its spokesperson, Pepa Rodríguez de Millán, has started by asking the minister whether he can sleep peacefully with "116 deaths on his back" and "how many more deaths are needed for someone to assume responsibility." In her view, "In the charred heap of the embankment in Urda, all the degradation to which this Government has led us is concentrated."
Rodríguez de Millán has accused Puente of lacking “neither dignity nor shame,” as well as “humanity and heart,” and has described him as a “puppet” in the hands of his “master,” in reference to President Pedro Sánchez, whom he sees as “desperate” but “not for seeking the truth,” but rather because he is articulating a narrative that “saves at least minimally the election campaign.” After warning that Vox will not stop until the minister assumes his criminal-law responsibilities for the accidents in Adamuz and Urda, all the party’s deputies have left the committee.
Criticisms from Sumar and IU and nuances from ERC
The member of parliament from Izquierda Unida and number three of Frente Amplio for Madrid, Toni Valero, has considered “insufficient” Puente’s appearance because it does not question the liberalization of the rail system, which, as he has denounced, has turned Spain into the European Union country “with the most people dead in train accidents in the last 25 years.”
For her part, Sumar spokesperson Verónica Martínez Barbero has defended that the minister must resign in the face of the accumulation of two serious accidents on Spain’s high-speed rail this year to date. “From Frente Amplio we ask him to resign; we ask him, with respect, recognizing his record and convinced that assuming that responsibility would be a final valuable service from his ministry. And believe me when I tell you that we say it in earnest because we think it is also the best thing for you,” she emphasized.
ERC spokesperson Gabriel Rufián has said that Puente is a “good politician” who at least “faces the issue,” but he insisted that “someone has to take responsibility” and questioned the PSOE about what it would demand if the head of Transport were from the PP. Even so, he pointed out that the debate about the minister’s continuation is “secondary” and “a distraction,” since, after the “wild liberalization,” the price of tickets fell by 24%, traffic increased by 47%, and investment grew only 9%, while today 115 deaths are counted.
Controversy over the leak of the audio recordings
From EH Bildu, Mertxe Aizpurua has reiterated that her formation will not bring forward judgments or point categorically to the causes or responsibilities for the incident, nor will it join dynamics “with political and electoral overtones” that assume guilt by possible responsible parties, appealing to “prudence and responsibility.” At the same time, she warned that they will not allow attacks to be directed against workers.
The different groups have agreed in reproaching the minister for the leak of the recordings from the day of the accident, conversations that are “biased,” according to the PP, with which, in Vox’s view, the Government would have tried to “blame some poor workers” for a responsibility that falls on the ministry. Rufián has criticized that, in this regard, the PSOE is acting in a similar way to the PP when it “makes life harder” for the train driver of the Angrois disaster.