Feijóo pressures Sánchez over Adamuz: he wants him to appear in the Senate now

Barcelona / MadridThe Adamuz accident has become a political crisis for Pedro Sánchez's government. While the People's Party (PP) had previously criticized the Spanish government's handling of the situation but avoided demanding accountability, this weekend they called for the resignation of Transport Minister Óscar Puente. On Monday, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo reiterated this demand in an interview on COPE radio, simultaneously calling for Puente's immediate appearance before Parliament. Unlike in the Congress of Deputies, the PP holds an absolute majority in the Senate and can force his appearance. Feijóo accused Sánchez of using Puente as a "firewall" to remove himself from the political spotlight and avoid confronting the situation. "Since the Spanish Prime Minister has treated the appearance as a joke, today in the Senate we will request his urgent appearance," he said, alluding to Sánchez's request on Friday to voluntarily appear before Congress to explain not only the Adamuz accident but also the recent European Council meetings. "He humiliates the victims," ​​she asserted, according to Europa Press. The Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has gone even further, calling not only for Puente's resignation but also for Sánchez's. At a breakfast briefing this Monday morning, the leader of the Madrid PP declared that the first to resign should be the head of the Spanish government, whom she accused of "delegating his responsibility to his shields." Although Ayuso has moved faster than the party leadership in demanding political accountability, the president of the Valencian Community has assured that the entire party is acting "in unison," even if they are taking different "timelines." For his part, Minister Óscar Puente, in the center of the opposition's target Following the train tragedy in Adamuz, the Minister of Transport defended his handling of the crisis on Monday against attacks and calls for his resignation from the People's Party (PP): "I can't do more, and no one can ask for more," he stated in an interview on TVE. The Minister, with whom Pedro Sánchez has closed ranks, denied any "opacity" in the days following the accident, which left 45 dead, and asserted the Spanish government's transparency in establishing the causes of the disaster: "I haven't lied, nor do I have any interest in lying," he said. After highlighting the 16 interviews and three press conferences he has given since the derailment in Córdoba, the minister affirmed that he "wants to know what happened" because his responsibility is "to prevent it from happening again." He thus labeled the PP's attitude "irresponsible" after the party demanded he back down based on "manifestly false or biased information" about the condition of the tracks where the fatal accident occurred. "I expected them to ask for my resignation; the question is, what are they basing it on?" he emphasized, insisting that if it is ultimately determined that he bears any responsibility for the tragedy, he will accept it: "Let whoever has to fall, fall, and if it's me, then I'll have to fall," he reiterated.

Puente, who has also faced calls for his resignation from ERC due to the chaos on the commuter rail network—regarding which he has asked for "patience"—focused most of his explanations this Monday on the causes of what happened in Adamuz. In this regard, he indicated that the track where the accident occurred broke in a section of one of the nine rails that had been laid in May of last year, "next to the weld," and added that the cause of the break will have to be analyzed. "It seems that there was a twisting [of the rail]," he said. The Railway Accident Investigation Commission (CIAF) Investigate the causes of the tragedy And at this time several hypotheses are being studied, Puente recalled.