Spain’s transport minister Óscar Puente resigns after the Urda crash
· BehindLines newsroom
Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, has resigned after the rail accident at Urda, in Toledo province, which killed 69 people. He is also giving up leading the Socialist list in Valladolid for the general election on 29 November.
According to Infobae, he announced the decision on Tuesday 3 November after more than four hours before the Congress’s Diputación Permanente. He said a minister "cannot continue" after two accidents of this gravity in under a year; Al Jazeera recalls that a high-speed derailment in Andalusia killed 46 people in January. Infobae writes that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez learned of it only minutes before it was made public.
Puente’s dismissal from office has been published in the official gazette, and deputy prime minister Carlos Cuerpo, the economy minister, is handling day-to-day business at Transport, according to Infobae. The same outlet reports the resignation of the head of the infrastructure manager Adif, Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña, though its own updates conflict on whether he left voluntarily or was removed.
Al Jazeera describes a Renfe train colliding with a stationary Iryo train on the Madrid-Seville line, after a signalling failure and an authorisation given by controllers in Madrid. The government announced 30 million euros in aid, including 72,121 euros per bereaved family, and opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, quoted by Infobae, said "Puente has gone, but Sánchez has stayed".
The exact causes, the investigation’s findings, the name of the next minister and Adif’s new head are not known.