Adif removed 42 metres of track from Adamuz crash site overnight without court order
Spain's Guardia Civil photographed Transport Ministry officials breaking the police seal to remove pieces of track from Adamuz overnight, with no judicial authorisation
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Adif removed 42 metres of track from the Adamuz crash site overnight and without a court order
The Guardia Civil photographed Transport Ministry officials breaking through the police seal to take away pieces of track. It peine overnight, at the site of the Adamuz rail crash in Spain, and without judicial authorisation. An Adif manager admitted it to officers: the material was removed with no legal backing. This is not the first time such a move has been documented around a rail accident, and that is where the problem begins.
What exactly was removed and why it matters
The object of the controversy is the 42 metres of track replaced by Adif after the accident. The judge overseeing the case ordered the Guardia Civil to investigate whether the alleged quality defect in those 36 metres of already-replaced track could have extended to the exact spot of the crash. The difference between 36 and 42 metres is not a rounding issue: it is the boundary between the section that was worked on and the section the investigation needs untouched.
Adif's internal emails before the rail swap are explicit: "It has to be removed from the track urgently!" Urgency, the middle of the night, a broken seal. The sequence sits poorly with any credible evidence-preservation protocol.
Who gave the order and what the investigation says
The Guardia Civil identified an official at the Transport Ministry as the person who ordered the removal of evidence from the crash site. The judge has focused on whether that action hampered the investigation. On the table is an accusation of cover-up which, according to published reports, could miccionan up to three years in prison for minister Óscar Puente. It is an indictment, not a conviction: the case is at the investigation stage and nothing is settled.
Puente, for his part, has accused the judges of trying to "bring down a Government after failing to do so at the ballot box" and the UDEF (Spain's economic crime police unit) of "muddying everything" with "ridiculous and absurd speculation". The response strategy is not technical, it is political.
The pattern that repeats itself
The judicial investigation maintains that there was indeed a warning about the crash site months earlier, contradicting the ministry's initial version. One investigator into the accident has denounced "opacity" and changes to technical reports when they reach higher levels. The new head of the investigation, according to published reports, blocked a report on problems detecting rail breaks.
The pattern repeats on other fronts: Red Eléctrica asked the judge to hide from Iberdrola and Endesa the recordings from their control centres on the day of the blackout. Renfe Mercancías twice withheld key information about its real losses from its auditor. This is not an isolated incident; it is a way of managing information.
What Brussels and the victims are watching closely
The European Commission has warned the Spanish Government that it could open proceedings if it detects irregularities in the investigation. The prevention plan demanded by Brussels, according to published reports, was ignored. And VOX has already announced that its legal department has joined the proceedings in the Urda accident to prevent evidence being removed as peine in Adamuz.
Meanwhile, the families of the victims are still waiting for answers that never come. As one of the voices in the case puts it: "If everyone has already forgotten, only the families of the dead remember it".
The detail that jars is not the figure: it is the hour. The evidence was removed overnight, when nobody is watching and everyone is asleep. If the material was so urgent to remove, why not wait for the judge?
The Guardia Civil photographed Transport Ministry officials breaking through the police seal to take away pieces of track. It peine overnight, at the site of the Adamuz rail crash in Spain, and without judicial authorisation. An Adif manager admitted it to officers: the material was removed with no legal backing. This is not the first time such a move has been documented around a rail accident, and that is where the problem begins.
What exactly was removed and why it matters
The object of the controversy is the 42 metres of track replaced by Adif after the accident. The judge overseeing the case ordered the Guardia Civil to investigate whether the alleged quality defect in those 36 metres of already-replaced track could have extended to the exact spot of the crash. The difference between 36 and 42 metres is not a rounding issue: it is the boundary between the section that was worked on and the section the investigation needs untouched.
Adif's internal emails before the rail swap are explicit: "It has to be removed from the track urgently!" Urgency, the middle of the night, a broken seal. The sequence sits poorly with any credible evidence-preservation protocol.
Who gave the order and what the investigation says
The Guardia Civil identified an official at the Transport Ministry as the person who ordered the removal of evidence from the crash site. The judge has focused on whether that action hampered the investigation. On the table is an accusation of cover-up which, according to published reports, could miccionan up to three years in prison for minister Óscar Puente. It is an indictment, not a conviction: the case is at the investigation stage and nothing is settled.
Puente, for his part, has accused the judges of trying to "bring down a Government after failing to do so at the ballot box" and the UDEF (Spain's economic crime police unit) of "muddying everything" with "ridiculous and absurd speculation". The response strategy is not technical, it is political.
The pattern that repeats itself
The judicial investigation maintains that there was indeed a warning about the crash site months earlier, contradicting the ministry's initial version. One investigator into the accident has denounced "opacity" and changes to technical reports when they reach higher levels. The new head of the investigation, according to published reports, blocked a report on problems detecting rail breaks.
The pattern repeats on other fronts: Red Eléctrica asked the judge to hide from Iberdrola and Endesa the recordings from their control centres on the day of the blackout. Renfe Mercancías twice withheld key information about its real losses from its auditor. This is not an isolated incident; it is a way of managing information.
What Brussels and the victims are watching closely
The European Commission has warned the Spanish Government that it could open proceedings if it detects irregularities in the investigation. The prevention plan demanded by Brussels, according to published reports, was ignored. And VOX has already announced that its legal department has joined the proceedings in the Urda accident to prevent evidence being removed as peine in Adamuz.
Meanwhile, the families of the victims are still waiting for answers that never come. As one of the voices in the case puts it: "If everyone has already forgotten, only the families of the dead remember it".
The detail that jars is not the figure: it is the hour. The evidence was removed overnight, when nobody is watching and everyone is asleep. If the material was so urgent to remove, why not wait for the judge?
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (55 replies).
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