Who watches the builders?

These you will now see are the images of the crane collapse in Vallbona, Barcelona, in the works to bury the Rodalies line of Montcada i Reixac that Adif is carrying out there. It happened on Wednesday. An enormous crane was swallowed by a sinkhole when the wall of a shaft that was to connect with the railway tunnel being built there gave way. This is the moment when the earth swallows the crane and here you have the image of the landslide it caused. We were lucky, because minutes before, there were workers in this hole, meaning we could now be talking about a tragedy. Consider that the hole that ended up being made was 17 meters deep and 19 meters in diameter. The crane was worth half a million euros. I say it was worth it because we will never see it again. They are injecting concrete into the hole to stabilize the ground with the crane inside, because if they had wanted to remove it, it would have taken them weeks to stabilize the area and be able to continue the works. Adif assures that there have been no movements in the houses, the tracks, or any other point of the works.The sinkhole has caused the usual closure of Rodalies, on three lines, at least until next week, the day is unknown. Today we explain that, according to the councilor of the Nou Barris district, Xavier Marcé, the Vallbona collapse could have been caused by the groundwater of the Rec Comtal, which passes through there and which would have contributed to a landslip. In fact, some media outlets explain that the passage of the Rec Comtal was obviously reflected in the project of the work, and that the neighbors also knew about it.And here comes the question: if the geologists knew it, and it must have been in the construction documents, if the neighbors saw it, why didn't the construction companies take it sufficiently into account? The hydrology of the terrain is part of the project for any action.  As if the incident in the Adif works were not bad enough, it turns out that it happened on the same day that a gas leak in Plaça de Sants in Barcelona, where the Generalitat's Department of Territory was carrying out metro works, caused a flare-up that firefighters took hours to extinguish. Here too, they are investigating the origin of the leak and what caused the flare-up. And finally, the Department of Territory is also responsible for the L9 metro works that forced the evacuation of a series of houses in the Putxet neighborhood of Barcelona, about three weeks ago.This morning I asked a public works expert what had happened with this concentration of serious incidents in public works and he told me that he wanted to think it was a trick of Divine Providence, but that the guard on the work done by construction companies could not be lowered. And it is better that they do not lower it, because right now Catalonia has a considerable volume of public works underway and the last thing we need is a state of psychosis.Good morning.