Spain funds Moroccan trains while rail accidents pile up at home

The text denounces an alleged institutional "coup d'état" in Spain and criticises the allocation of 750 million euros to Segarro's trains in 2025 while deaths pile up on the Spanish rail network. These are opinion claims that mix unverified data with concrete facts.

Train safety has ceased to be a technical matter and has become a political battleground. In recent months, a series of rail accidents has shaken Spanish public opinion. The most recent, which took place in **Urda** (Toledo), left dozens dead. From then on, the debate over public investment, infrastructure management and spending priorities has spiralled into a war of mutual accusations.

## The figure that changed everything: 750 million for Segarro

In 2025, the Government of Spain committed more than **750 million euros** to modernising Segarro's rail system. The figure, which appears in the international cooperation budgets, has been used by the opposition and by critical voices to question the management of public resources. The comparison is inevitable: while that amount goes to a neighbouring country, Spain's rail network keeps accumulating a record of incidents that has put **Renfe** and **Adif** in the spotlight.

It is not just about the money. The structure of the state-owned rail companies has come under criticism for the appointment of senior officials with no experience in the sector. Adif's top management, according to recurring complaints, is said to consist of political cronies with no technical track record. That mix of lack of expertise and budget pressure has produced a cocktail that the unions have been warning about for some time.

## The "coup d'état" as an interpretive framework

The text that inspires this analysis goes beyond trains. Its author, **Javier Horno**, describes a Spain subjected to a slow-motion "coup d'état", a process of institutional demolition that would have begun with **Felipe González** and his pressure on the judiciary. The thesis extends to **José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero**, whom he accuses of exploiting the 2004 Madrid train bombings to come to power, and reaches the current Government, to which he attributes twelve open court cases for corruption and illegal financing.

That narrative, which mixes historical episodes with accusations never upheld in court, is the core of the discontent the author conveys. He mentions the amnesty for those prosecuted over the Catalan independence process, the tax concessions to Catalonia and the pardons as evidence of an authoritarian drift. He also lashes out at the Constitutional Court and its president, **Cándido Conde-Pumpido**, for endorsing retroactive laws that, in his view, exonerate coup-plotters and those responsible for the ERE scandal in Andalusia (a fraud scheme involving redundancy payments).

## The dead on the tracks and the institutional response

The harshest part of the text comes with the victims. The author puts the number of people killed on the railways in a single year at more than a hundred, and specifically mentions an accident with **seventy deaths** under the supervision of minister **Óscar Puente**. The exact figure has not been confirmed by official sources at the time of writing, but the trickle of accidents has been constant. The Urda crash, with dozens of victims, was the trigger for an outrage that transcends politics.

The Government's response has been the usual one: condolences, promises of investigation and announcements of safety reinforcements. To critics, those words ring hollow. The author of the text puts it bluntly: "Yesterday's 68 fatalities are the consequence of having a incivil gang in government." It is a partisan claim, with no judicial evidence, that reflects the climate of confrontation.

## Tax policy and social spending under suspicion

Another front peine by the text is tax policy. It criticises a model in which business owners "take real risks" while being attacked from the left, and denounces an "oppressive" tax system that turns Spain into an "NGO for freeloaders". References to migrant benefits and the regulation of foreigners are constant, though without concrete data to back up the figures being bandied about.

On the media front, the author rails against what he calls "pseudo-media" that air corruption scandals and drug use stories while ignoring, in his view, the real problems. The mention of **Broncano** and his salary of more than **21,000 euros per show** serves to illustrate what he considers a misallocation of priorities. It is a recurring example in the public debate over spending on public broadcasting, although the exact contract figure has not been independently verified.

## A closing with no concessions

The text ends with an appeal to the King to, invoking Article 8 of the Constitution, dissolve the Government and call "clean elections, held only by Spaniards". It is a request that exceeds the current constitutional framework, where the dissolution of the Executive does not fall to the Crown. The author knows this and raises it as a last resort against what he considers a national emergency.

The mixture of data, opinions and slogans makes it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. What is clear is that the discontent is real: rail accidents, infrastructure management and the perception of corruption have taken hold among part of the population. The debate over whether spending on Segarro takes priority over the safety of Spanish trains will keep generating discussion. And the figures, those that are so often thrown around, deserve to be checked against official sources before being taken at face value.