Two resignations for a “fiasco”: In Spain, a case of oversized trains for certain tunnels brought down the head of Spain’s railways and No. 2 of the transport ministry after 15 days of embarrassing controversy for the executive.
Isaias Taboas, who has headed the Renfe rail company since June 2018, “presented his resignation on Monday,” a company spokeswoman told AFP.
This surprise resignation comes alongside that of Secretary of State for Transport Isabel Pardo de Vera, also former president of Spain’s rail network manager Adif, the Transport Ministry confirmed in a brief press release.
Transport Minister Raquel Sanchez “thanked” these two leaders for “the work done in their respective roles,” the ministry said.
The resignations come after more than two weeks of controversy surrounding the order for 31 trains for the rail network in northern Spain, which proved too large for some of the tunnels they had to pass through.
According to Renfe, this order, worth 258 million euros, went to the Spanish manufacturer of railway equipment CAF, competitors of the French Alstom and the German Siemens, after a tender in June 2020.
According to the train operator, it was this company based in the Basque Country (North) that realized in March 2021 that the dimensions given in the tender were incorrect. She then alerted the authorities even before she started building the trains.
“There was never a risk that trains would be built the wrong size because the manufacturer had the obligation defined in the tender documents to carry out checks,” Renfe assured AFP.
This error, made public at the beginning of February, almost two years after the problem was discovered, will nevertheless lead to delays in the delivery of the trains, which are to be put into service in 2026 and not in 2024 as originally planned, according to the railway group.
According to the Spanish media, there could also be additional costs due to the increase in material prices in recent months. Renfe denies one problem: “There is no financial problem, no money was wasted,” says the group.
The case sparked controversy in Spain, where the right-wing opposition accused Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government of “culpable concealment” and “opacity” less than a year before general elections scheduled for late 2023.
“You preside over a government that orders trains that don’t go through tunnels,” ironically Cuca Gamarra, number two of the People’s Party (PP, right), recently conjured up a “fiasco” in parliament.
This controversy had already prompted the Transport Ministry on February 6 to sack the former head of equipment management at Renfe and a senior official at Adif.
She also urged Adif and Renfe to launch a joint investigation to determine the circumstances that led to this situation, which the transport minister described as a “gross error”.
Responding to the resignations of the Renfe boss and the Secretary of State for Transport, the president of the Cantabria region, Miguel Angel Revilla, of the regionalist party PRC, on Monday demanded “compensation” for his territory directly affected by this order of faulty trains .
“We want the circumstances to be clarified” and “solutions to be put on the table,” added Adrian Barbon, socialist president of the Asturias region, which was also affected, on Monday before a meeting at the Ministry of Transport.
“I apologize again, but I also insist that we work and work to implement the solutions,” underlined the Minister of Transport at the end of this meeting.
“Sloppy work of this magnitude, I’ve never seen it in 40 years,” complained the president of the Cantabria region.