Spain’s transport minister faces lawmakers on Tuesday over Europe’s worst train crash since 2013, as the government readies an emergency aid package for victims and their families.
Transport Minister Óscar Puente will appear at 5 p.m. (1600 GMT) before the Permanent Deputation, a reduced caretaker legislature that holds limited powers between parliamentary terms before an election on November 29, according to Reuters reporting from Madrid on Tuesday.
Last week’s high-speed collision has a confirmed death toll of 69 so far and has sparked widespread calls for Mr Puente’s resignation, including from coalition allies.
It was the second accident on the same line this year after a crash in January that killed 46 people, a fact that has sharpened questions about whether safety lessons from the earlier disaster were applied.
An aid package and a speed-limit proposal
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Monday the government would approve an aid package doubling payouts for crash victims under compulsory passenger insurance, advancing compensation payments and improving temporary incapacity cover.
Spanish newspaper El País, citing unidentified sources, reported on Tuesday that the measures being considered included imposing a 40 kph (25 mph) speed limit when a train is relying on a driver’s vision to see obstacles ahead if a signal system fails.
Mr Puente said on Friday that a computer failure knocked out the signalling system, and called a subsequent control-centre order for the train to resume its journey ‘inexplicable.’
Investigators estimated an impact speed of 160 to 200 kph. Those two facts — a signalling failure and an order to proceed — are now at the centre of the inquiry, and Mr Puente’s appearance on Tuesday is expected to focus on what the control centre knew, who authorised the movement, and why the January crash did not prevent a repeat.
Political pressure before an election
The crash has become a political crisis as well as a safety inquiry, with resignation calls coming from within the governing coalition’s orbit weeks before Spaniards vote on November 29.
The Permanent Deputation hearing is a caretaker forum, not a full parliamentary session, but it will set the terms of the debate: whether this was a technical failure, a human error in the control centre, or a systemic failure to act after January’s 46 deaths.
