Three and a half weeks before a general election, Spain has had to replace the minister in charge of its railways. On Wednesday morning Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stood on the steps of the Moncloa palace and announced that Carlos Cuerpo, his economy minister and first deputy, will run the Transport Ministry on an interim basis until voters go to the polls on 29 November.
The vacancy was created on Tuesday evening by Óscar Puente. After roughly four hours of questioning by a standing committee of parliament, where most parties demanded that he take responsibility, he used his closing remarks to say he was leaving. A transport minister, he argued, could not stay on after two disasters of that scale within a single year, whether or not he was personally to blame. He called it “a matter of political dignity.”
The two disasters are the collision near Urda, in Toledo province, on 28 October, which killed 69 people, and the January derailment at Adamuz near Córdoba, which left 46 dead. The government has blamed last week’s crash on a mistaken decision by a controller at the network operator Adif after the LZB train-protection system failed. Investigating judges will now examine what happened.
Puente, 57, said he had made up his mind within minutes of hearing about Urda and told only his family, keeping even Sánchez unaware. He will not run in the election, and his departure becomes formal once it appears in the official gazette.
Sánchez praised the decision as one that would help restore faith in the rail network. Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo of the People’s Party replied on X with four words for the prime minister: “Apply this to yourself.” The timing is awkward for the Socialists, who lose one of their most combative campaigners just as polls showed a slight dip after the crash. The analyst Eduardo Bayón expects high-speed rail safety to stay at the centre of the campaign.
