MADRID (The Thursday Times) — Riot police clashed with protesters outside Spain’s Transport Ministry in Madrid late on Wednesday as anger grew over the high-speed train collision that killed at least 68 people, with Transport Minister Óscar Puente refusing calls to resign.
More than a thousand people gathered outside the ministry demanding accountability for the crash near Urda in Toledo province, the Catalan newspaper Ara reported. The protest was called by far-right groups including Falange and demanded the resignations of Puente and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. It ended in police charges after some protesters threw flares and other objects at officers.
‘Absolutely devastated’
Puente, speaking at Madrid’s Atocha station, said he was “absolutely devastated” by an accident he called “inexplicable”. “It is one of the hardest moments one can face,” he said. He said he did not intend to step down for now, as his priority was to establish what had happened and fix it. The CSIF union called for his resignation, accusing him of making a worker at rail infrastructure operator Adif a scapegoat.
Twenty-one minutes
The ministry has blamed an order from Adif’s control centre at Atocha that it says breached railway rules, Europa Press reported. At 8.32am the LZB train-protection system failed, halting six trains along about 69km of the Madrid–Seville line. Eight minutes later, the control centre allowed all of them to resume. Under the rules, the ministry says, traffic should only have restarted at “speed at sight”, limited to 40km/h. Instead, the Renfe AVE train reached 200km/h before slamming into a stationary Iryo train at 8.53am.
The crash is Europe’s deadliest rail disaster since 2013 and Spain’s second fatal high-speed collision this year, after one near Adamuz in Córdoba province killed 45 people in January. Eighty people were injured, 15 of them very seriously, the health minister said, and rescuers have been searching the wreckage carriage by carriage. Spain holds a general election next month.
