The Ministry of Transport is not one of the departments considered essential to the Spanish State (like Foreign Affairs, Interior, Defense and Justice). However, this is not just any wallet. It is one of the ministries obtaining the largest allocation in the general state budget: 12.269 billion euros in the 2023 budget, the last approved. The Spanish Ministry of Transport oversees some of the country's most important public companies, such as Adif [the public establishment responsible for managing the railway network], Renfe [responsible for train operations] or Puertos del Estado [port manager] or public-private entities like Aena.
However, in the current legislature, he has become a major thorn in the side of the president of the government, Pedro Sanchez. It was within this ministry that the corruption plot involving José Luis Abalos and Koldo Garcia took root [a political corruption scandal in Spain which broke out in February 2024 and which heavily damaged the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party]. Additionally, three fatal accidents (in Adamuz, Gelida and Urda) occurred, resulting in 116 deaths in just nine months.
Key element of political management
The Ministry of Transport, in addition to its technical nature, is one of the key elements of political management. Most state investments come from this portfolio, and mayors, ministers or regional presidents come to it to obtain work that can make them win or lose elections. Its responsibility includes infrastructures, large or small, which must structure the country, in addition to guaranteeing basic services, and for this reason it is precisely a "political tool of the first order", as former Minister Oscar Puente emphasized this Tuesday, in his speech after the meeting of the Council of Ministers.
Oscar Puente spoke of the constant complaints to the Minister of Transport: "why high-speed trains do not reach my city", "why a tunneling project cannot be undertaken"... He deplored that in Spain, over the last 30 years, regardless of the political color of the administration, there has been no rigorous debate regarding the planning of infrastructure such as high-speed trains, and that the Koldo affair and its derivatives, first, and then the accidents, which opened the debate on the management of this portfolio.
A minister sentenced to 24 years in prison
Oscar Puente arrived at the ministry at the end of 2023, and only a few months later, in January 2024, the Koldo affair exploded with the arrest of the adviser to former Minister of Transport José Luis Abalos. The affair shook the executive and the ministry, where some of the senior officials involved in the different branches of the conspiracy were still present. The management of the former mayor of Valladolid was free of such scandals, but he had to face them due to the actions of his predecessor.
The arrest of Koldo Garcia, in the shadow of Abalos, was a real turning point. The advisor was arrested for illegal receipt of commissions related to the award of two contracts for the purchase of masks during the Covid-19 pandemic. The contracts, signed during the worst of the pandemic, came from Puertos del Estado and Adif and benefited Soluciones de Gestion S. L., the company linked to broker Víctor de Aldama. For these facts, José Luis Abalos and Koldo Garcia were sentenced to 24 years and 19 years in prison, respectively, by the Supreme Court for crimes of organized crime, corruption, embezzlement and influence peddling.
But in addition to the two contracts for the purchase of masks, José Luis Abalos and Koldo Garcia are also involved in another legal case, also linked to the Ministry of Transport. This is the investigation into the allegation of rigging of public works contracts, in which Santos Cerdan, who succeeded former minister Abalos as head of the organizational secretariat of the PSOE [the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party], is also mentioned as an accused. Judge Leopoldo Puente said José Luis Abalos and Koldo Garcia could each have received a commission of one million euros and put the value of the suspect contracts at 537.2 million euros.
Regarding this latest case, on Thursday the UCO [Unidad central operativa, organ of the judicial police] searched Abalos' house in Valencia, as well as other properties in Cordoba and Seville, and visited the offices of Adif Alta Velocidad to request information. The operation, led by Judge Ismael Moreno of the National Court, was accelerated after a new report from the UCO Economic Crimes Department collected new evidence pointing to greater rigging in public contracts. Officers arrested six people.
Among these two cases, a good number of trusted officials of the ministry at the time are also accused. Among them is Isabel Pardo de Vera, who was the Secretary of State for Transport and former president of Adif, as well as various officials of the companies that allegedly paid commissions.
Two fatal accidents in nine months
Pedro Sanchez's legislature ended marked by the extremely serious train accidents recorded on the Madrid-Seville line, in addition to that of Gelida, in Barcelona. The first, in Adamuz (Cordoba region), resulted in the death of 46 people and dozens of injuries and occurred after several cars of an Iryo derailed and hit an AVE traveling in the opposite direction. The judicial investigation is still ongoing, but the first conclusions point to the breakage of a track as the origin of the disaster.
Only two days later, in Gelida, a trainee train driver died when a train on the R4 Rodalies line derailed after hitting part of a wall of the AP-7 which collapsed onto the tracks due to a storm. The last of the fatal accidents occurred on October 28, when, just a few minutes before 9 a.m., an AVE hit an Iryo which was parked on the track near Urda, in Toledo. At least 69 people died in the incident, and dozens were injured.
In just nine months, 115 people died on the same line of the Spanish high-speed train, the Madrid-Seville line, the first to enter service in 1992. The President of the Government recognized that the data was "unacceptable". The succession of accidents thus led to the resignation of Puente and the president of Adif, Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña, but the opposition of the PP [Popular Party, right] and Vox [extreme right] demands that the one who must fall, both due to the accidents and the cascade of corruption cases, be the head of the executive. Pedro Sanchez entrusted the responsibilities in Transport to the first vice-president, Carlos Cuerpo, until the end of the legislature. He will have to face the cursed wallet during these weeks.
