MADRID — Spain's transport minister, Oscar Puente, announced his resignation on Tuesday over last week's deadly high-speed train crash near Urda, telling lawmakers at the end of a lengthy hearing: “A transport minister in a country like Spain cannot continue in office with two accidents of this severity in less than a year.” The October 28 collision killed 69 people and was the second deadly crash on the same Madrid-Seville line this year, Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters via SRN News
The resignation reverses the position Awaaz Punjab reported on October 30, when Puente ruled out stepping down over the Urda crash and pledged to restore confidence in Spain's high-speed network. What changed on Tuesday is the decision itself: after first laying out the government's emergency aid package and new safety measures, he told the Permanent Deputation — the standing committee that sits while parliament is dissolved — that he was stepping down, and withdrawing from the November 29 election lists. Read the earlier refusal report
Puente said he had taken the decision to resign within minutes of learning of the crash, but chose to remain in office until the immediate emergency response was under way, preliminary investigations had begun and the first measures to compensate victims and improve rail safety had been put in place, the Associated Press reported. “I made my decision about my future in the first few minutes after the tragedy, as soon as I learned about it,” he said, according to AFP. “Today I am making that decision public, in the place where it is most appropriate to do so.”
Source: Associated Press
What happened at Urda on October 28
The crash happened outside the village of Urda, around 130 kilometres (80 miles) south of Madrid in the central province of Toledo, when a high-speed AVE train operated by state-owned Renfe — carrying 397 passengers — ploughed into the back of a stationary train belonging to the private operator Iryo, which was carrying 147 passengers. Sixty-nine people were killed and around 200 injured, Euronews reported. It was one of the worst railway disasters in Europe this century and Spain's worst rail crash since 2013.
Source: Euronews via Ekkow
Puente told lawmakers the sequence began with the failure of an automatic safety system, which halted all trains on a 63-kilometre stretch of the line — but a control centre run by Adif, Spain's state rail infrastructure manager, nonetheless authorised the Renfe service to resume its journey. The train travelled about 25 kilometres at more than 160 km/h before the collision; investigators have estimated an impact speed of 160 to 200 kph. Puente defended the reliability of the LZB automatic safety system and announced new technology to strengthen rail safety, including an AI agent to oversee the system and “minimise the possibility of human error”, AFP reported.
Source: AFP via Rapporteur
Aid for victims, and a reduced service on the line
Earlier on Tuesday, Puente announced an aid package of €30 million for the families of the dead and the scores of people injured — yaani, about 300 lakh euros, roughly ₹320 crore at about ₹107 to the euro. Under the measures he laid out, services on the Madrid-Seville line will be reduced until the Railway Safety Agency reviews the line's safety system and the government completes the delayed rollout of the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS), Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters via SRN News
The political fallout: an election in 26 days
The right-wing opposition — the conservative People's Party (PP) and Vox — had demanded Puente's resignation, as had two parties whose votes the Sanchez government has relied on, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the Catalan pro-independence party Junts; unions had criticised him for appearing to pin all the blame for the disaster on one control centre operator. The crash, together with January's disaster near Adamuz in the southern province of Cordoba, which killed 46 people on the same line involving the same companies, has overshadowed campaigning for the November 29 ballot, in which Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is trailing in opinion polls, AFP reported.
Source: AFP via Rapporteur
Puente, who had earlier pledged to work “tirelessly” to restore confidence in the world's second-largest high-speed rail network, said stepping down was “good for the country and for democracy” and that he would not stand as a candidate at the next election because he wanted “to live up to my party”, Euronews reported. He ended his speech with a farewell: “I trust my country will live up to the occasion. I have tried to live up to it. Farewell.”
Source: Euronews via Ekkow
The disaster itself: how the Urda collision's death toll reached 69 in Spain's worst rail crash since 2013. Read the Urda crash report
Sanchez must name a successor to run the transport ministry through the election campaign and the continuing Urda and Adamuz investigations. Watch for the Railway Safety Agency's review of the Madrid-Seville line, the delayed ERTMS rollout timetable, whether reduced services stay in place, and whether Puente's exit steadies or further damages the Socialists before the November 29 vote.