Spain’s transport minister resigns after train crash kills 69.
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Spain’s Transport Minister, Oscar Puente, has resigned less than a week after a deadly train collision that killed 69 people, making it the second major railway disaster in the country in less than a year.
Puente also withdrew from the upcoming general election, saying he had initially decided to step down immediately after last week’s accident but remained in office to coordinate the government’s initial response.
“A transport minister in a country like Spain cannot continue in office with two accidents of this severity in less than a year,” Puente said, referring to the latest collision and a high-speed train derailment in Andalusia in January, which claimed 46 lives. The latest accident occurred last Wednesday when a high-speed train operated by state-owned Renfe crashed into a stationary train on the Madrid-Seville line in central Spain’s Castilla-La Mancha region. The collision reportedly happened at an estimated speed of between 100 and 125 miles per hour, after the Renfe train slammed into a privately operated Iryo train. Reports indicated that trains on a section of the route had been ordered to stop following a signal failure.
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