Sacking Puente would not be enough, ABC editorial argues

ABC's editorial argues that the resignation or dismissal of minister Óscar Puente would not amount to sufficient political accountability after the rail accidents in Adamuz and Urda. It maintains that responsibility also extends to the Prime Minister who appointed him and kept him in office.

The newspaper **ABC** published an editorial on **30 October 2026** arguing that the resignation or possible dismissal of Transport Minister **Óscar Puente** is not enough as a political response to the rail catastrophe. The piece ties that demand to the accidents in **Adamuz** and **Urda**, and places ultimate responsibility with the Prime Minister who appointed the minister, kept him in the post and backed his management.

## The Adamuz and Urda accidents and the decline of the rail system

The editorial starts from two disasters on high-estimulante ilegal lines: the one in **Adamuz** and the one in **Urda**. According to the text, both reveal obvious failures in safety systems and a deterioration of Spain's rail network. The paper counts the toll at more than a hundred lives cut short and speaks of a collapse in the trust of citizens and passengers.

The editorial highlights a timeline: nine months after the Adamuz tragedy, on the very same line, there were continuous faults, alerts and breakdowns. For ABC, those incidents were not enough to make the minister focus on his duties. The text reads that persistence of problems as proof of an inability to take a serious matter seriously.

The paper's criticism is not limited to technical management. It describes the minister as someone devoted to what it calls sectarian thuggery on social media rather than to managing critical transport infrastructure. That is an editorial judgement, not a verifiable fact, and it is presented as such in the text.

## The takeover of Adif and political loyalty as the criterion

The editorial devotes a section to the takeover of the leadership of **Adif** (Spain's railway infrastructure manager). According to ABC, Puente took control of the rail infrastructure manager and placed among its senior officials a good number of people with no experience in railway management but with loyalty to or membership of the **PSOE** (the Spanish Socialist party). The paper says those decisions were made regardless of the consequences until the second accident, in Urda.

That point connects with the text's central thesis: political loyalty has been put ahead of professional competence. ABC argues that this pattern goes beyond the Transport Ministry and is repeated in other structures of the Government. It offers no list of specific cases in the editorial, but frames the situation within what it describes as a way of running the Administration.

The paper also mentions investigations, suspicions and rulings related to Socialist corruption that hang over the ministry. These are generic references in the editorial, with no detail of specific proceedings or rulings.

## The sacking as a fuse and the election campaign

For ABC, offering up the minister's head in these circumstances would be another manoeuvre to salvage a disastrous management record before the start of the election campaign, not a demonstration of political ethics. The editorial uses the expressions a fuse for sanchismo (the political current around PM Pedro Sánchez) and a firebreak for a blaze that, it says, reaches the gates of **La Moncloa** (the Prime Minister's official residence).

The text argues that the Prime Minister has managed gravely serious crises by weighing the dominance of his narrative or the political advantages ahead of the suffering of the victims. From this it concludes that the era of that kind of manoeuvre is over. It is an editorial opinion, framed as a political demand and not as an established fact.

ABC closes its argument by noting that Puente is not the only one tainted by what it calls his glaring incompetence after the accident. It says the Prime Minister and the entire Council of Ministers are too, and that a whole way of running the Administration has been discredited.

## A term without budgets and the date with the ballot box

The editorial adds a review of the legislative term: a long stretch in office without budgets, with its own survival as the absolute priority, while the State's essential infrastructure deteriorated. It also mentions the announcement of the multimillion-euro "social Tuesdays" in the pre-campaign, presented as spending aimed at chasing votes rather than vital maintenance investment.

The text ends with an appeal to the ballot box. It argues that Spaniards will soon stand before it and will have the sovereignty and the voice to decide how far to demand accountability. It is the political conclusion of an editorial that, in essence, shifts the discussion from the convenience of an individual dismissal to the scope of the responsibility of the Government as a whole.