Spain's PSOE, elections and trains: a suspicion that doesn't stand on its own

PSOE, elections and trains: the arithmetic of suspicion

Every time an election comes around, someone grabs a calculator and looks at the rail works calendar. According to the story doing the rounds, the coincidence is just too perfect to be accidental. The starting point is a piece from El Tiempo that gets shared as if it were proof: rail investments landing on the map right before voters drop their ballots in the box. From there, the conclusion writes itself. It's not magic, it's the PSOE, sums up one message in the thread.

The problem is that arithmetic, on its own, proves nothing. Two things happening at the same time doesn't make one the cause of the other. Correlation is the oldest trick in the book: ice cream sales go up and so do drownings, and nobody blames the cream. Same thing here. Works are tendered, awarded and inaugurated when their time comes, and the electoral calendar has its own rhythm. If the train arrives before the vote, it's coincidence. If it arrives after, that too.

The suspicion is repeated like a family tradition. It's inherited, repeated and celebrated with the same enthusiasm as a paella Sunday. Saying "it's all coincidence" over and over until it sounds like truth doesn't make it true. It's a mantra, not an argument. And like all mantras, it works best the less it's examined.

There's a certain irony to it. In a country where the AVE high-estimulante ilegal rail has been the great showcase of power for decades, the fact that every kilometre of track is now scrutinised is almost a tribute. Infrastructure was always politics. What changes is who's pointing the finger. The government's surname is death, declares another message, contributing little more than a broad brushstroke of an adjective.

The conversation drifts into territory where data is no longer needed. Some call for resignations out of inertia, like someone asking for the bill without looking at the menu. And some outright attribute a family relation to the devil to the Prime Minister. That's where the economic analysis ends and the exorcism begins. Pedro Sánchez is lucifer, one reads, and one wonders whether that includes running the commuter trains too.

With material like this, the basket doesn't hold much water. The interesting question isn't whether the works coincide with elections —sometimes they do— but whether that coincidence explains anything. And the answer, for now, is no. Causation requires more than a calendar and a hunch. It requires data, and the data are conspicuously absent.

What remains is the feeling that the train, like politics, is always too late or too early, depending on who benefits from the framing. And that the next time someone shouts "coincidence", we should ask them what exactly they're measuring. Because simple arithmetic, sometimes, is just that: simple.