Resignations in Spain due to trains that were too big for the tunnels they had to go through

First modification: 02/21/2023 – 00:42

Isaías Taboas, at the helm of Renfe since June 2018, “has submitted his resignation,” reported a spokeswoman for this public company.

David Lucas, until now General Secretary of Housing, will be the new Secretary of State for Transport, while Raül Blanco, who was a senior position in the Ministry of Industry, will be the new president of Renfe, announced the Ministry of Transport led by Raquel Sánchez.

Days before, Raquel Sánchez had warned of the possibility of dismissals: “my hand is not going to tremble to demand responsibilities, purify responsibilities,” she told the press.

These resignations come two weeks after the controversy broke out over the order for 31 trains, which were never built, to be used in northern regions of Spain, but whose size turned out to be too large for some of the tunnels they had to go through.

The order, for an amount of 258 million euros, was awarded in June 2020 to the Spanish railway manufacturer CAF, a competitor of the French Alstom and the German Siemens.

According to Renfe, it was CAF, based in the Basque Country (northern Spain), which realized in March 2021 that the dimensions supplied during the tender were not correct and alerted the authorities before starting to produce the trains.

“Fudge”

“There was never a risk that trains with wrong dimensions were built because the manufacturer had the obligation (…) to verify that their proposals had a place in the network,” Renfe stressed.

In any case, according to the public company, this incident will cause a delay in the delivery of the trains, which will be in circulation at the beginning of 2026 and not 2024, as initially planned.

The case already cost him the job, at the beginning of the month, of Renfe’s equipment management manager and another senior official of Adif, the public company attached to railway control and which depends on the Ministry of Transport.

Since it came to light, the error has generated great controversy and the conservative opposition accused the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, of “culpable concealment”, in a year of local and national elections.

“You preside over a government that orders trains that do not fit through the tunnels, with almost two years of guilty concealment, and we will see what this problem will cost us all,” the spokesperson for the Popular Party, Cuca Gamarra, launched at Pedro Sánchez.

Adif and Renfe opened a joint investigation to clarify what happened, and Raquel Sánchez met with the presidents of the two affected regions, Cantabria and Asturias.

“I reiterate my apologies, but I also insist that we are working and that we have started to address all these solutions that can help mitigate the impact of this problem,” Sánchez told reporters after the meeting.

“I had not seen a botch of this caliber in 40 years,” lamented Miguel Ángel Revilla, regional president of Cantabria.