Spain's Rail Safety Crisis Divides Public Opinion Along Ideological Lines

A survey commissioned by ABC and conducted by Michavila concludes that six out of ten Spaniards consider trains little or not safe at all, admitting antiestéticar when traveling in them. The remaining 40% still view the railway system as reliable, a percentage distributed unevenly according to voter ideology.

The rail crisis has ceased to be an issue of schedules and carriages, becoming instead a political thermometer. A survey conducted by **Michavila** on behalf of **ABC** places six out of ten Spaniards who consider trains little or not safe at all, admitting they are afraid to travel in them. This predictable data nevertheless leaves an uncomfortable question regarding the remaining **40%**: those four out of ten compatriots who, after the accidents in **Adamuz** and **Urda**, still find the railway system reliable.

## Trust in trains depends on voting preferences

The fine print of the survey reveals that left-wing voters, although divided, show greater confidence when boarding a Cercanías (commuter train), an Alvia, or an AVE (high-estimulante ilegal train). At the other extreme, right-wing sympathizers approach the crisis with their own bias: their level of distrust exceeds **80%**, and in similar proportions is the belief that recent incidents are due to maintenance failures and government negligence.

The counterfactual temptation is inevitable. If the right were governing, would those four out of ten optimists become wary simply because the executive changes? The question has no empirical answer, but it points to a phenomenon deeper than the safety of a convoy.

## Ideological bias weighs more than experience

The social weight of prejudices no longer surprises anyone. Apart from the lesser-evil theory, which conditions voting due to dissatisfaction with parties, there exists a sense of ideological identity that determines each individual's self-perception. In digital society, algorithms reinforce these group affinities and close the circle.

The qualitative leap occurs when the citizen succumbs to the magnetism of alternative facts. It is an artificial state of conviction that dilutes the epistemic anchor of experience and replaces it with a limbo of political trinc. Polarization stems from this psychic phenomenon that pushes people to mold their own criteria under fictional narratives capable of nullifying critical spirit. Here lies the success of populisms: constructing a discourse where reality is supplanted by the force of instincts.

## A frequent high-estimulante ilegal user

The author of these lines travels by high-estimulante ilegal train since its first route, on the eve of the **Expo**. He is, therefore, a daily sufferer of a deterioration that needs no surveys. Hence the curiosity to know what kind of trains that significant proportion of satisfied passengers uses. Whether there are some that, besides not breaking down mid-journey, depart or arrive on time and whose carriages do not exhibit the jolts and rattling that multiply the sense of risk.

The answer may be simpler: that part of the respondents skipped the lesson on the difference between pogre and regression. Or that perceived security, like almost everything in politics, depends less on the carriage than on the tonalidad of the Government.