Adamuz versus Gelida: the weight of the mindset

A new train tragedy claimed the life of a young train driver in Gelida yesterday. However, on the front pages of two Catalan newspapers this Wednesday, The Vanguard and The Newspaper They were still opening their respective front pages with the train accident in Adamuz. I'm well aware that it turned out to be much more deadly, but it's also true that the crash happened on Sunday, and therefore, coverage is now focused on the investigation. The fact that in two newspapers that are sold primarily in the Principality of Asturias, the most prominent news story is the Andalusian crash demonstrates the enormous capacity of the Spanish media system to impose its news agenda by sheer force of will. The hierarchy they've applied is based on an intuition about what topic interests their readers most, and, of course, most of the narrative is fabricated and disseminated from Madrid (following a very specific mindset).

Paradoxically, The Country Yes, it opened with Catalonia, although in this case my suspicion is that it did so out of fear that the accident in Córdoba would become politically entrenched. It is significant that the headline focuses on the fact that the accident site passed a safety test two months ago – which exonerates them from responsibility – and that one of the subheadings is "PP sectors urge Feijóo to use the accident against Sánchez." Meanwhile, right-wing newspapers are already running headlines such as "The government has only spent two out of every ten euros on the Andalusian railway" (The World), "The government is now reducing speed on sections of the AVE high-speed rail line as demanded by the train drivers" (ABC) or "Feijóo lamented another death in a train accident: 'This is too much'" (The reasonWe'll surely be examining the Adamuz accident for days (and we must!). I only hope that, after this initial inertia, the Catalan press doesn't soon abandon the Gelida incident and all that it sheds light on regarding structural deficiencies.