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Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente has resigned six days after a train accident in the center of the country that killed 69 people.
Minister Puente announced his decision in Parliament, giving a report on the circumstances of the collision between two trains near the town of Urda, 100 kilometers south of Madrid.
“In a country like Spain, the transport minister cannot remain in office after two such serious emergencies in less than a year,” said Oscar Puente.
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On the morning of October 28, near the town of Urda in central Spain on the Madrid-Seville highway, a high-speed train of the state company Renfe rammed an Iryo train standing on the tracks. As a result, 69 people were killed and dozens were injured.
The first of the two disasters that the minister spoke about occurred on January 18 in the south of Spain, in Andalusia, in the city of Adamus. There, too, the Renfe and Iryo trains collided, killing 46 people and injuring more than 200.
At the end of last week, on October 30, Minister Puente stated that he had no intention of resigning.
“My task now is not to discuss whether I should remain in my position, but to solve the problem. It would be easier for me to leave, but this does not correspond to my character or what the Prime Minister asked me to do,” the minister said then, responding to opposition demands for his resignation.
But now he stated in parliament that he decided to leave on October 28, immediately after the disaster.
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In a report on the government's response to the disaster, Puente told lawmakers what new railroad safety measures were planned.
The day after the disaster, the Spanish press published recordings of conversations between the drivers and the control center minutes before the collision.
Recorded conversations between the control center at Atocha Station in Madrid and two drivers indicate that initially a fault in the automatic signaling system stopped all trains in the affected section, but then one high-speed train was mistakenly given permission to continue at normal speed, despite the fact that another train, some 25 km ahead, had stopped.
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