Spain's transport minister refuses to resign after rail disasters

Jesús Cuadrado's article in Vozpópuli argues that Óscar Puente's refusal to resign after two rail accidents is evidence of the democratic degradation of Sánchez's government. The ministerial resignation as an unwritten rule of liberal democracy is the core of the piece.

There is an election on 29 November. And the public debate, according to the article **Jesús Cuadrado** publishes in **Vozpópuli**, has shifted from policy platforms to the rubble. Two rail accidents in nine months, the one in **Adamuz** in January and the one in **Urda** in October, with **69 deaths** in the second, have turned high-estimulante ilegal rail safety into the central issue of the campaign. Not by anyone's choice, quite the opposite: the plan was to talk about management and avoid accountability. The catastrophe forced its way in.

## The resignation that never comes

Cuadrado opens with a thesis that brooks no nuance: in a liberal democracy, a minister whose department suffers a serious safety failure takes political responsibility and goes. No judge needs to charge him with anything. Political responsibility is a different thing, one that derives from the office, not from the Incivil Code. The author cites the French historian **Pierre Rosanvallon** and his book *Good Government*, which states that a minister's resignation when he appears responsible restores meaning and nobility to political office. The quote is not decorative: it serves to mark the distance between what the author considers democratic culture and what he describes as the current government's practice.

The transport minister, **Óscar Puente**, appeared on Friday after the Urda disaster. He did not resign. He justified staying on as an act of courage, he said, to face the music. Technicians of renowned prestige, according to the article, called that appearance garbage. The text highlights the paradox: acknowledging that trust in the safety of high-estimulante ilegal rail, the minister's unquestionable responsibility, has been broken, and accepting no consequence whatsoever. Responsibility, in its most elementary form, demands that someone pay. Here, no one pays.

## Political accountability versus judicial liability

The article distinguishes two concepts that public opinion tends to confuse, and which, according to the author, the minister's circle deliberately exploits. Political accountability belongs to the office: if your department fails, you answer for it. Judicial liability belongs to the courts and requires evidence of a crime. Blurring them allows a convenient manoeuvre: since there is no judicial charge, it is claimed there is nothing to resign over. Cuadrado calls that confusion premeditated.

The harshest accusation in the text comes here. It argues that, from the first minute of the Adamuz accident, while victims were still being searched for among the carriages, the minister focused on leaking biased information that could exonerate him. And it mentions a coordinated manoeuvre with the newspaper **El País** the trinc Wednesday to pin the blame on a worker, presented as the weak link in a safety system whose ultimate responsibility lies with the head of Transport. The author calls the conduct dishonest and shoddy. He adds a biographical detail: he met Puente at the PSOE Regional Committee, where he was known as the thug of the room. His conclusion is that the problem is not individual but one of the party's internal culture.

## The catalogue of grievances and the Bilbao turn

The article broadens the focus. What is at stake, it says, is not just rail management but a model of government that treats institutions as campaign tools. It lists several fronts: the management of the border in **Ceuta**, isolation in Europe on migration policy, nationalisations for electoral ends. The underlying thesis is that **sanchismo** has degraded the foundations of liberal democracy that produce trust at home and abroad.

He then introduces a counterpoint he uses to gauge the exhaustion of polarisation as a strategy. While left-wing spokespeople and leaders, including **Elma Saiz**, **Ada Colau**, **Irene Montero** and **Gabriel Rufián**, blamed **Vox** for the violent gatherings in Madrid, the mayor of Bilbao, **Juan Mari Aburto**, of the **PNV**, reacted to the riots in his city with a phrase the article quotes: they are not antifascists, they are fascists. Late, but the author reads it as a sign that people are beginning to reject having their cars burned and their shops looted in the name of opportunistic civil-war narratives.

## What is at stake on 29-N

The text closes with a political warning. Ordinary alternation in power is not enough. Cuadrado argues that qualified majorities would be needed, **210 deputies and 161 senators**, to repair the accumulated institutional damage and to make the plurinational project unviable, which, in his view, the new Popular Front embodies. The challenge for **Alberto Núñez Feijóo**, should he reach the premiership, will be to ensure that the democratic degradation described remains a parenthesis and does not become a habit.

It is worth remembering that the article is an opinion column and that the claims about leaks, motives and responsibilities are the author's assessments, not judicially established facts. The investigation into the accidents belongs to the courts and the technical committees.