Grief and fury: Gabriel Albiac demands sackings over Urda rail disaster

In El Debate, Gabriel Albiac argues that the Urda rail disaster in Spain, with 69 dead and 64 missing, was not chance but the result of a degraded network and political irresponsibility. He demands immediate dismissals rather than resignations.

The article by **Gabriel Albiac** published in **El Debate** on **30 October 2026** does not speak of an accident. It speaks of a massacre. Thirty hours after the disaster, he writes, nobody has resigned and nobody has been dismissed. The **69 dead** and **64 missing** of Urda add to the **46 dead** nine months ago in **Adamuz**, plus the hundreds of injured in varying degrees of severity. For the author, that cumulative toll cannot be contained in the word fatality.

## The tally Albiac lays on the table

The text chains the disasters together with a logic of accumulation. The **46 dead** of Adamuz are trinc by the **69 dead** and **64 missing** of Urda. Albiac calculates that under the responsibility of the Transport minister more than **160 dead**, **64 missing** and an army of wounded and mutilated survivors already lie. The figure is not a rhetorical detail: it is the backbone of the article.

The question that structures the text is economic. Where did the money go that should have been invested so that a once first-rate rail network did not degrade into a death trap? Albiac does not answer with a specific budget line. He answers with an accusation: the safety systems of the most high-tech trains were unusable, and the most powerful trains kept running while nobody lifted a finger.

## 'Chance is the refuge of ignorance'

The phrase that gives the article its title is a classical quote Albiac wields as a weapon. To say 'chance', in his view, is to throw a handful of sand into the eyes of whoever is watching. Above all, into the eyes of the families struck by death. Anonymous fate, he argues, is the only culprit left when the chain of responsibility is emptied of names.

Hence his distinction between resignation and dismissal. He does not ask them to resign. He believes granting them the honour of resigning would be an undeserved privilege. He demands immediate dismissal, with all the dishonour that entails, for those who hold positions and salaries for which, in his judgement, they are unfit. And he points directly at **Moncloa** (the Spanish prime minister's office) and the Transport ministry.

## A country flaunting its obsolescence

The article does not stop at the accident. Albiac turns it into a symptom. He speaks of a corrupt ministry whose gangrene contaminates everything, of a prime minister untouched by any storage of corpses, and of a country flaunting its obsolescence. He also mentions European money: it flew away in smoke, he writes, and in diamonds. The reference to EU funds stands as an accusation left undeveloped, with no figure to back it in the text.

The ending is terse. Thirty hours. Not a single dismissal. Albiac offers no technical proposals and no names of possible replacements. His thesis is simpler and harsher: in a structure where nobody is responsible for anything, rail safety becomes the first victim. And the dead, the proof.