Spain's transport minister Óscar Puente resigns six days after train crash that killed 69
Óscar Puente has resigned as Spain's transport minister and withdrawn from the 29 November election, saying no minister can stay in office after two fatal high-speed rail crashes in less than a year.
Spain's transport minister, Óscar Puente, has resigned six days after a high-speed train collision in central Spain killed 69 people, ending days of speculation about his future and shaking the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez less than four weeks before a general election.
Puente announced his decision on Tuesday at the end of a lengthy appearance before lawmakers in Madrid, where he had been answering questions about the crash near the town of Urda, in Toledo province. He told the chamber that he had made up his mind within minutes of learning of the disaster, but had kept the decision to himself while the emergency response was organised and the first safety measures were put in place.
"A transport minister in a country like Spain cannot remain in office after two accidents of this seriousness in less than a year," Puente said, describing the move as a question of political dignity, coherence and empathy with the victims. He also announced that he would withdraw from his party's electoral list for Valladolid, meaning he will not stand as a candidate in the early parliamentary election on 29 November.
The announcement was a sharp reversal. Only hours earlier, sources close to Sánchez had indicated that Puente would neither resign nor be dismissed and would remain the Socialist candidate in Valladolid. Puente himself had repeatedly ruled out stepping down since the crash, and on Friday he had placed his future in the prime minister's hands, only for Sánchez to reject his departure as unfair, on the grounds that there was no evidence of political responsibility for the accident.
The disaster happened on Wednesday 28 October, when a high-speed train operated by the state-owned company Renfe ploughed into the back of a stationary train belonging to the private operator Iryo, around 130 kilometres south of Madrid on the Madrid-Seville line. Sixty-nine people were killed and around 200 were injured, making it one of the worst railway disasters in Europe this century.
According to the account Puente gave lawmakers, a failure in the line's automatic safety system had halted all trains on a 63-kilometre stretch of track. Controllers in Madrid then authorised the Renfe service to resume its journey, even though a red signal prohibited movement and its automatic safety system had failed. The train travelled about 25 kilometres at more than 160 kilometres per hour before the collision, with investigators estimating an impact speed of between 160 and 200 kilometres per hour.
Spanish authorities said on Monday that all 69 people killed had been identified. Fifty-four were Spanish citizens and 15 were foreign nationals, including four from the United States, two Australians and two Japanese, and one each from Argentina, Canada, France, Mexico, Portugal, Tunisia and the Czech Republic.
The Urda crash was the second fatal high-speed rail accident on the same line this year. In January, a train derailed near Adamuz, in Córdoba province, and struck an oncoming service, killing 46 people. Together, the two disasters have claimed 115 lives and placed Spain's railway safety record, and the world's second-largest high-speed network, at the centre of the election campaign, with opposition parties demanding that Sánchez himself resign.
Earlier on Tuesday, before announcing his resignation, Puente had set out an emergency aid package worth 30 million euros for the families of the dead and the injured, alongside new safety measures. Services on the Madrid-Seville line will be reduced until the Railway Safety Agency reviews the line's safety system and the delayed rollout of the European Rail Traffic Management System is completed. Other measures include a 40 kilometre-per-hour speed limit when a driver must rely on spotting obstacles ahead after a signal failure, more staff and improved conditions in rail control centres, and an automated system to monitor conversations between drivers and controllers.
Puente invoked the example of Jorge Coelho, the Portuguese transport minister who resigned in 2001 after a bridge collapse killed 59 people. What happens next will be watched closely: the government must name a successor, the investigation into the Urda crash continues, and rail workers have raised the prospect of a strike on 17 November to demand better safety. For Sánchez, whose Socialist party is trailing in opinion polls, the resignation removes one immediate political problem but leaves railway safety as a defining issue of the final weeks of the campaign.
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