PP’s deputy secretary for Health and Social Policy, Carmen Fúnez, has said this Friday, with regard to the investigation opened by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office into a possible fraud in the use of European funds aimed at improving the high-speed rail line Madrid-Seville, that “corruption has taken human lives.”
In response to the media after taking part in Europa Press’s ‘Socio-Health Breakfasts,’ Fúnez criticized that, after the deadly train accident in Adamuz (Córdoba) recorded last January, “the high-speed line Madrid-Andalusia was not improved,” the same one in which last week 69 people died in the collision of two trains in Urda (Toledo).
In her view, the fact that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office has decided to open this investigation “is already a sufficient reason for Sánchez to leave the Government as soon as possible,” and, although she has acknowledged that it will be necessary to wait for the outcome of the proceedings, she argues that what is already known is that “there have been 115 deaths on the rail network in less than nine months.”
“What is seen is that when the General State Budgets are not approved, when action is not taken with rigor and professionalism in the field of public management, corruption and lack of management appear,” she stressed.
Likewise, Fúnez reiterated that “it is terrible” that between 2024 and 2025 projects worth 52,000 million euros in Spain were left unexecuted, when, with scarcely one billion euros earmarked for the AVE line to Andalusia, the rail network could have been reinforced.
Criticism of the use of European funds
“To think that the Government has stopped executing 52,000 million seems to us like waste that has taken many lives and that is unassumable for a country that is the fourth-largest economy in the eurozone,” she insisted.
On the other hand, the spokesperson for the Popular Group in Congress, Ester Muñoz, has questioned whether the PSOE intends to “attack” the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, in the same way, as she said, that it does with some Spanish courts, for having initiated an investigation to determine whether it “could have embezzled” European funds that were to be used for maintaining the tracks.
In an interview on Antena 3 collected by Europa Press, Muñoz responded in this way to the statements of her socialist counterpart, Patxi López, who this Monday spoke about the “coincidence” that when socialists start to “stick their heads up,” “someone always appears” who intends to harm them.
López was speaking after the operation carried out by the Guardia Civil within the framework of a new separate secret piece of the 'Koldo case', directed by magistrate Ismael Moreno, which included the search of the home of the former minister José Luis Ábalos in Valencia, the detention of his partner and of five other people, as well as a request for information to Adif.
"Unfortunately, we have been seeing for a long time how when journalistic information comes out about corruption in the PSOE or in the circle of Pedro Sánchez, there are always attacks first on the media, then on the judges when the instructions begin, and even ends up talking about judicial coups when there are convictions. I don't know if now they are also going to attack the European Public Prosecutor's Office," Muñoz has said.
"New weight" after the rail accidents
For the PP's campaign spokesperson as well, the action of the European Public Prosecutor's Office represents a "new burden on the emotional state of a nation that is hurt" by the rail incidents that have caused the deaths of 116 people in just nine months.
"You expect a Ministry of Transport that manages resources, that makes the public service work, and what has been dedicated to all these years has been to embezzle money and rig contracts," he has stated.
Muñoz has recalled that at the head of that ministry was first of all "the right-hand man of Pedro Sánchez," referring to the former minister José Luis Ábalos; later Raquel Sánchez, "who had to resign because she bought trains that didn't fit on the tracks," and then Óscar Puente, who "was doing propaganda and giving ministers pins away, saying that the AVE would go at 350 kilometers per hour".
"Those three people who have been put in place by Pedro Sánchez, therefore, Pedro Sánchez is responsible for everything we are learning," Muñoz has concluded.