Spain: Spain's transport minister resigns after train accident

New York. Almost a week after the train accident with 69 deaths in Spain, Transport Minister Óscar Puente surprisingly announced his resignation. At the end of his hearing before the parliamentary committee in Madrid, he also announced late in the evening that he would no longer run in the early parliamentary elections on November 29th.

The resignation demanded by all opposition parties came as a surprise, as he had been ruled out several times in the past few days by Puente and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Puente said: "A minister cannot remain in office after two accidents of this seriousness in less than a year. It is a question of political dignity, consistency and political empathy."

Two high-speed trains collided on Wednesday last week near the municipality of Urda, around 130 kilometers south of Madrid. A train operated by the state railway company Renfe ran into a stationary train operated by the private operator Iryo from behind. It was the second serious train accident in Spain in just nine months. In January, 46 people were killed in a collision between two high-speed trains in Adamuz, Andalusia.

Just a few hours earlier, Madrid had decided on measures to improve rail safety. The left-wing government announced in the afternoon that an aid package of 30 million euros for victims and relatives was also approved at the weekly Council of Ministers meeting.

While in the case of Adamuz, one of the causes is a broken track, the investigation into the accident in Urda focuses primarily on the failure of the LZB train control system and possible errors in the instructions from the control center of the network operator Adif.

The number of trains between Madrid and Seville will be reduced until the new European train control system ERTMS goes into operation there, as Puente explained before his resignation. If the current LZB system fails, a second employee in the control center will have to check and confirm the instructions to the train drivers. This is intended to prevent trains from continuing to travel despite unclear route conditions.

In addition, the number of staff in the control centers is to be increased and the working conditions of the employees are to be improved. The government also decided to cap prices for alternative means of transport during the closure of the Madrid-Seville route involved in the accident. This is intended to prevent excessive costs for travelers as a result of the train cancellation.

The aid package includes direct state aid, advances on subsequent compensation payments and a doubling of benefits from statutory passenger insurance. Victims and their relatives should be looked after through specially set up contact points. There is also a special provision for temporary incapacity for work for injured people.

All 69 fatalities - 40 men and 29 women - have now been identified, authorities said. Germans and minors are therefore not included. 54 people who died were Spanish citizens and four others were US citizens. Two each came from Japan and Australia, the others from Canada, France, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Argentina, Mexico and Tunisia. 37 of the total of around 200 injured are still being treated in hospitals.