Jesús Domínguez, spokesperson for victims of the Angrois train crash, said Óscar Puente had no other option than to resign as transport minister following the Urda-train-collision/">Urda rail disaster, which killed 69 people. “When a tragedy of this kind occurs, there are three types of responsibility: political, technical and judicial,” Domínguez said in remarks reported by elDiario.es. The person with the highest political responsibility need not be responsible for the accident itself, he added, but should resign, apologise and investigate.
Domínguez contrasted Puente’s response with that of Ana Pastor, who was transport minister under Mariano Rajoy and, he said, never accepted responsibility for the Angrois disaster, which killed 80 people and injured 144. But he also criticised Puente: as mayor of Valladolid, he supported a motion calling for an independent investigation into Angrois; after becoming minister, he neither replied to the victims nor received them.
The victims believe an independent inquiry would have helped prevent the Urda crash. Domínguez argued that experts would have highlighted the danger of operating without a dedicated high-speed safety system, describing ASFA—also referred to as BZL—as a security gap.
He said he sees strong similarities between Angrois and the circumstances surrounding Urda, including the measures announced after the crashes. The ERTMS system, which could have stopped the train involved in the Angrois disaster, had been switched off months before because of technical problems and effects on punctuality. It was restored across the Ourense–Santiago route in 2023, ten years after the crash.
Domínguez said that, before Puente’s resignation, the response had involved blaming others, influencing public opinion and avoiding a technical investigation. He called for any proposed state agreement on high-speed rail to begin by acknowledging that the state mishandled Angrois and repeating the investigation, as he said Europe had requested.
Sources: elDiario.es.