The resignation of Óscar Puente announced last night has provoked new reactions on the political board a few weeks before the elections. The Frente Amplio candidate, Ada Colau, supported this Wednesday in an interview on Spanish Television (TVE) the decision of the former minister, which she described as a gesture of “dignity” and considered a necessary response to the political responsibility that she assumed at the head of the railway system. “It is a difficult gesture, it is an expected gesture, but we know that in politics it is not common,” he noted.
During the interview, the former mayor of Barcelona wanted to delimit direct responsibility for the incident from that which concerns public management. “Óscar Puente was not directly to blame for this accident at all, but he did have political responsibility for the railway system,” he argued, contrasting Puente's decision with the absence of resignations after other recent tragedies such as the Dana in Valencia.
However, regarding Puente's personal decision not to lead the PSOE candidacy for Valladolid, Colau has declined to make internal assessments and has limited himself to expressing respect for his personal position after stepping aside.
Regarding the appointment of Vice President Carlos Body to provisionally assume the Transport portfolio, Colau has assessed Pedro Sánchez's decision as “logical, coherent and understandable” given the short time frame until the appointment with the polls. The leader of the Frente Amplio has defended that the Ministry must focus on “technical and functional management” focused on guaranteeing operation and security.
“The important thing is to focus the proposals after the elections and make a country pact to regain confidence in the train,” the candidate stressed, while placing the improvement and investment in the Cercanías network at the same level of strategic priority as the High Speed Train.
Colau took advantage of the interview to charge against the partisan use of the tragedy by the right and the extreme right. In particular, he has reproached Vox for not suspending its campaign for a single day and for using the victims and the accident as a “throwing weapon.” Faced with these practices, he has considered that Puente has done “the right thing” by assuming political responsibilities and has maintained that his departure leaves the PP and Vox “a little without arguments” to continue using the incident electorally.
“Now it's enough to try to use this accident politically, now it's about talking about solutions,” he stated. The candidate has called on Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal to specify their proposals to correct the problems of the railway model. Colau has warned that the cuts will not serve to resolve the situation and has ironically stated that "Milei's chainsaw is not going to fix the train problem in Spain."
Asked if she considers the resignation fair, she rejected that the debate should focus on the minister's individual situation. In his opinion, those who assume high responsibilities in a Government must put the common good before personal interest in critical moments. “Faced with such a great double tragedy, with more than 100 deaths, it is logical that political responsibilities should be expected,” he argued. Puente's decision, he added, makes it possible to offer peace of mind and confidence to the victims and the general public and to open a new stage focused on solutions.
The leader has also invited voters to take into account the different willingness of the parties to be accountable when they go to the polls on November 29. “There are governments that assume political responsibilities and others that never do so,” he stated, in response to those who may question whether the minister's resignation is enough to close the crisis and suggesting that citizens will know how to value this gesture of responsibility when deciding their vote.
Beyond the railway crisis, Colau has claimed an international current that, in his opinion, can stop the advance of the extreme right and reverse the polls that currently favor the conservative bloc. He has cited recent events in Brazil - where the polls showed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as the loser -, the citizen victory led by students in Serbia and the electoral defeat of Donald Trump in the United States as examples that the extreme right "can be defeated at the polls."
The candidate has expressed her satisfaction with the American result and has defined Trump as one of the great current problems in the world, due to his authoritarian character. But, above all, he has highlighted the citizen mobilization that he identifies behind these results. “I hope that we will also see it in Spain on November 29, that we will also turn the polls around,” he stated.
For Colau, the key to this reaction is having placed the material conditions of life at the center of the political debate. He mentioned access to housing, the fight against speculation, raising salaries, reducing precariousness, strengthening public services and decent pensions. Faced with a reactionary wave supported, as she has denounced, by big technology companies, economic elites and the war industry, the candidate has defended that citizens are beginning to organize to stop this advance. “It seemed like a monster that was impossible to defeat, because we are defeating it,” he concluded.
