Óscar Puente has resigned as Spain’s transport minister, six days after a high-speed rail collision near Urda, in Toledo province, central Spain, killed 69 people and injured about 200.
Puente announced his departure at the close of a four-hour appearance before the Permanent Deputation of the Congress of Deputies, the body that sits while parliament is dissolved. Nothing in the session had hinted at it.
Reading from prepared notes, he said a minister “cannot continue in his post with an accident of this kind”. He also withdrew as the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) lead candidate for Valladolid in the parliamentary elections on November 29.
Both Puente and Moncloa, the Prime Minister’s office, said the decision was his own. Puente said he had informed Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez only minutes beforehand.
The crash on October 28 occurred when a Renfe AVE high-speed service bound for Seville struck the rear of a stationary train run by private operator Iryo. Puente told MPs that the control centre of Adif, the State-owned infrastructure manager, had let the Renfe train continue after the LZB automatic safety system failed.
Among the dead was former People’s Party (PP) employment minister Fátima Báñez, the CEOE employers’ confederation confirmed.
It was the second deadly accident on the Madrid-Seville high-speed corridor this year. On January 18, 46 people died near Adamuz, in Córdoba province, Andalusia, southern Spain.
For almost a week the government maintained that Puente had Sánchez’s full backing. The minister claimed that support himself in the Moncloa press room only hours before he quit.
Yet Sánchez had not offered a single public gesture in his favour in his many appearances after the crash, the paper noted.
Pressure from the government’s own allies had become hard to ignore. Every parliamentary group except EH Bildu urged Puente to go during the session.
Sumar spokeswoman Verónica Martínez Barbero told him that, although he was not to blame, political responsibility was his. Gabriel Rufián of Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Mikel Legarda of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) pressed the same demand.
The electoral calendar added to the strain. Sánchez is due to return to the campaign trail with a rally in Valencia on November 6.
El Debate argued he could not credibly appear there with Puente still in post. Socialists in the region had demanded, and eventually obtained, the resignation of regional president Carlos Mazón over his handling of the deadly floods of October 2024.
Polls conducted after the crash pointed in one direction. A Target Point survey for El Debate, carried out on October 28-30 among 1,024 people, put the PSOE on 25.5 per cent and 99 to 103 seats in the 350-seat chamber.
The PP stood at 31.8 per cent with 131 to 135 seats, while national-conservative Vox reached 19.9 per cent and 68 to 72 seats. Sigma Dos, polling for El Mundo, also placed the Socialists at around 100 seats.
Across six polls published on November 1-2, the combined PP and Vox tally ranged from 197 to 206 seats. That is well above the 176 needed for a majority.
The figures extend a trend visible well before the crash. In June, some 75 per cent of Spaniards said they wanted fresh elections, Brussels Signal reported.
Within hours of the resignation, Sánchez recast it as an act of integrity. In a post on X he praised Puente for facing the crisis before stepping aside “out of dignity” and said politicians like him showed “we are not all the same”.
A Moncloa statement issued later that evening repeated the line, saying neither all politicians nor all parties were alike. El Debate predicted the phrase would become the Socialist campaign slogan.
The opposition rejected that reading. The PP said the resignation had been driven by the polls rather than by dignity or concern for the victims.
The party added that the real problem lay with whoever had put the country’s infrastructure in the hands of former transport minister José Luis Ábalos and then of Puente.
On November 4, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo urged Sánchez to follow his minister’s example. “Apply it to yourself,” he said.
Vox leader Santiago Abascal said the Prime Minister was hiding behind his “henchmen” while the responsibility remained his own.
Puente’s name will nonetheless still head the PSOE ballot paper in Valladolid. Candidacies were published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) on November 3 and, under a 1977 ruling by the Central Electoral Board, ballots are not reprinted when a candidate withdraws. Should he be elected, the seat would pass to the next candidate on the list.
The outcome matters beyond Spain. The Irish Times has described Sánchez’s coalition as the most prominent left-wing government among the EU’s 27 member states.
The government has yet to say which minister will take on the transport portfolio until polling day.