Villarroya and foreign control of Spain's rail safety

Villarroya points to foreign contractors behind Spain's rail safety

On a Thursday morning, on TVE, an analyst named Villarroya said out loud what until now had only circulated in forums and coffee-shop conversations: that Spain's rail signalling and traffic control systems are in the hands of foreign contractors, some with Israeli capital or technology, and that this, combined with maintenance shortcomings, makes for a cocktail that is hard to swallow. He said it 24 hours after an accident on the Madrid-Andalusia line, in Urda (Toledo), with a warning that sounded like an afternoon mystery show: on Saturday night "things are going to happen." The remark, made on a morning magazine show, has served to move the issue out of the hands of conspiracy theorists and into the realm of public procurement.

The context is not trivial. On the stretch where the accident occurred, according to the data used in the analysis, there were telecommunications systems installed in 1992, a track that rose more than ten metres above a wagon, and a maintenance directorate that was abolished. On top of that, the safety of the line was awarded to a joint venture (UTE) with French participation for a figure that technicians considered recklessly low. The ministry insisted it was not. And on it went.

Which companies control rail signalling in Spain?

The question has been circulating for days in economic gossip circles. The name that comes up most often is Thales, the French defence and transport multinational, which is credited with the contract for the signalling and traffic control systems. The debate over its shareholding structure has turned into a war of accusations: some claim there is Israeli capital in its structure; others reply that it is a French company with French institutional shareholders and that, at most, Mr Cohen might hold a token stake. Confusing the nationality of the company, the nationality of its executives and the nationality of its shareholders is par for the course in this kind of controversy.

The underlying issue is another one: technological dependence. Signalling systems, ERTMS, control centres and rail telecoms are critical infrastructure. Whoever installs, maintains and updates them has access to protocols, codes and timings. You don't need to be a counterintelligence genius to understand that this is a position of power. Another matter entirely is whether sabotage trinc from that, which is a logical leap the evidence does not support.

Unaudited maintenance and the recklessly low bid

Miguel Ángel Uriondo, former head of the president's office at Adif (Spain's rail infrastructure operator), denounced on television that the Transport Ministry has been expelling technicians from the agency for months. It is a fact that fits the internal-dismantling thesis: fewer in-house technicians, more dependence on external contractors, less supervisory capacity. The abolition of the maintenance directorate points in the same direction.

The award to the French joint venture for a figure technicians considered below the real cost is the other pillar of the story. When a company accepts a contract at a loss, someone ends up paying: either the taxpayer through contract amendments, or the user through cuts in service. On the railway, the user is called a passenger, and the cut is called an incident.

The Urda accident and the shadow of sabotage

The Urda disaster, in Toledo, has rekindled distrust. In 35 years there had been no accident of this kind on the stretch, according to the analysis; in nine months, two in a row. The timing, coinciding with diplomatic tensions between Spain and Israel, and with the warnings of ambassador Dana Erlich, has fuelled all kinds of hypotheses. The most extreme: that the Mossad sabotaged the signalling, taking advantage of poor maintenance as cover. There is no evidence whatsoever of that, and it should be said.

The most plausible hypothesis, and the one most people share, is more boring: an obsolete system, maintained on the cheap, with expelled technicians and contractors chosen on price, fails. Everything that can fail, fails. And when it fails, the politician on duty looks the other way.

The government's silence and the political bill

The accident's communication management has been, to put it mildly, opaque. No network audit, no technical explanation, no appearance with data. Minister Óscar Puente ruled out an audit after the Ademuz accident. Now the Urda accident forces him to review, contract by contract, which companies the money was spent on and how maintenance was carried out. Ábalos also passed through that ministry, and the shadow of opaque contracting hangs over every award.

The political bill is twofold. On one hand, the opposition has a goldmine: every incident is an argument. On the other, the government faces the evidence that rail safety allows no budgetary shortcuts. The money not invested in maintenance is invested in compensation, in fruta and in lost votes.

The foreign control theory: from conspiracy to fact

The thesis that "the Jews control the trains, the army and the airports" has gone from a bar-stool quip to a commonplace in certain circles. The leap is dangerous: pointing to dependence on foreign contractors in critical infrastructure is one thing; turning that dependence into a global conspiracy is another. The former is a problem of industrial policy and national security; the latter is a prejudice with centuries of history.

Serious analysis requires separating the two. Spain has a technological sovereignty problem: the systems that control its trains, airports and communications depend on companies whose decision-making centre lies abroad. That is fixed with investment, with well-designed public procurement and with in-house technical capacity. It is not fixed with conspiracy theories which, on top of that, distract from what matters: maintenance, technicians and contracts.

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On Saturday night, according to Villarroya, things are going to happen. Or not. The analyst left the phrase hanging, like someone throwing a stone and hiding their hand. Meanwhile, trains keep running on tracks that in some stretches have systems three decades old, and the technicians who could detect the failures before they happen are still being expelled from public agencies. That is the fact that needs no mystery.