Óscar Puente, the politician who aspired to succeed Pedro Sánchez in the PSOE and resigns after two train accidents with 115 deaths

In the PSOE everyone assumed that Óscar Puente would try to succeed Pedro Sánchez. Not moving the chair for them, but trying to occupy it when they decided to leave. It was even expected that he could be anointed by the general secretary of the party and that he would have many options of winning internal primaries with the support of the militancy in the event that a candidate from the non-official sector decided to step forward and challenge him for leadership. That budding political career has been interrupted with his resignation this Tuesday after two train accidents that have caused 115 fatalities in nine months.

Although he had expressed his intention to do exactly the opposite, the Minister of Transport has announced his resignation from office and from leading the list to Congress for Valladolid in the elections on November 29. He has done so after a long appearance in the Permanent Deputation of the Lower House.

Since the call of the elections, on October 5, in addition to acting as de facto spokesperson for the PSOE on social networks, the highest institutional leader of railway infrastructure in Spain was working in tandem with Pedro Sánchez in the pre-campaign, a role that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero played in 2023, now out of focus after his accusation for the rescue of the Plus Ultra airline and the scandal of the jewels hidden in a safe. On the same day of the announcement, he posted an almost eight-minute video to express his "reflections" on the appointment with the 29-N polls, which ranged from a closed defense of the Government of which he is a part - "avant-garde model and global progressivism" - to harsh criticism of a potential alliance of the PP and Vox, which he gave as an example of "hatred" and "mediocrity."

In these weeks Puente has attended three rallies with the president - in the one in Valladolid he gave his own 20-minute speech -, several informative meetings, such as the Nueva Economía Fórum breakfast and a colloquium at the Club Siglo XXI on Monday and Tuesday of last week, in which a significant bulk of the questions revolved around politics, and he has given interviews to TVE and La Ser, in addition to La Sexta, without abandoning his role as commentator and scourge of the opposition in X. This Wednesday he planned to hold a meeting with socialist militants in Cádiz, which he suspended due to the accident.

After the Adamuz tragedy, even in the critical sector of the party with the ruling party that the Minister of Transport represents, they separated the "facet of a thug public figure" from his "profile of an effective manager, much more institutional", as he had demonstrated in crises like the Dana. Those days, however, he tried to discredit that the main hypothesis of the cause was the breakage of the track - advanced by EL MUNDO and later confirmed by the Railway Accident Investigation Commission -, ruling out that it was "a decisive indication."

The former mayor of Valladolid, who together with Sánchez had been the most publicly enthusiastic in encouraging the spirit of the comeback on 29-N by appealing to the useful vote, will no longer be the one in charge of managing this new crisis.