Adif: the firewall Spain's government is preparing to save Puente

Adif: the firewall Spain's government is preparing to save Puente

The Spanish government already has a name on the table to absorb the fallout from the Urda rail crash: the chairman of Adif. The plan, first reported by ABC, would involve letting the head of the public rail operator fall so that Transport Minister Óscar Puente and Pedro Sánchez himself stay protected. The debate over the scope of such a resignation has turned into an even more uncomfortable question: how far does political responsibility go when the failures are technical and the officials were hand-picked?

The Urda accident, with several safety systems failing in a chain, has put Adif in the spotlight. An incident log signed at 8:30 in the morning, 23 minutes before the crash, revealed four technical failures in the moments leading up to the collision, according to the information released. The international version of the accident report later removed the references to a "chain of breakdowns", a detail that has fuelled suspicions about the handling of official communications.

Who appointed Adif's chairman, and why is he now being blamed?

Adif's chairman is not a career professional who arrived through open competition. He is a political appointee chosen by the government. That is the point stressed by the most critical voices: if responsibility lies with the agency, it also lies with whoever appointed and kept him. The discussion becomes more complicated when you remember that the previous head was moved out of the front line and relocated to a lower-profile post, which some read as a pattern of internal protection.

The sequence of events points to a chain of failures: the LZB system going down, communications problems, track sensor faults and fluctuations in the electrical voltage. The available data paint a picture of infrastructure at its limits, with an oversized high-estimulante ilegal network and maintenance that has not kept pace with investment. Spain has the second-longest high-estimulante ilegal network in the world, behind only China, with Japan third at 3,150 kilometres. Keeping that network running requires resources that, according to the most critical analyses, have not been guaranteed.

The power grid and the LZB: the failure nobody wants to own

The LZB system, responsible for automatic train control, goes down when the electrical voltage fluctuates. The comparison doing the rounds is a household one: it is like the fuses blowing when you plug in a washing machine, dishwasher, iron, microwave and oven at the same time. The rail network and the power grid share a dependency that nobody has wanted to tackle in depth. Renfe has issued an order that, if the LZB fails, trains should resume running on sight, which in practice means applying the existing rule. On the day of the accident, several controllers reportedly gave the order to resume normal running, a practice that, according to some accounts, had become routine.

The debate over responsibility extends to middle management. Some argue that technical civil servants are being given instructions that skirt the edge of legality and that, when something goes wrong, they are the ones who pay the price. The independence of regulators is called into question when senior officials answer to political criteria.

The electoral calendar and the government's erosion

The accident has erupted at a moment of peak political tension, with an early election that has upended the calendar. The pre-campaign has been shaken by the event, and some analyses predict a severe punishment at the ballot box. The figure circulating in political gossip is 210 seats for the right, a combination that the most realistic calculations consider unlikely, but which reflects the mood of weariness. High turnout and abstention on the left are factors that complicate any forecast.

Minister Puente will appear before the permanent committee of the Congress of Deputies on Tuesday, and until then caution is shaping the strategy. The resignation of Adif's chairman is being presented as the most immediate move to contain the damage. The question hanging in the air is whether that firewall will be enough, or whether the chain of responsibility will reach higher levels.

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The most widespread prediction is that the chairman of Adif will go, but nobody dares to say the operation will stop the erosion. The power grid, the rail network and politics all share the same problem: when the voltage fails, everything blows up.