Óscar Puente dismantles Feijóo's demands over the Urda accident and reminds him of his past as a "drug trafficker's friend"

The former Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, has once again attacked Alberto Núñez Feijóo and called him "liar" and "friend of a drug trafficker" after the PP leader questioned his departure from the Ministry, a resignation linked to the Urda (Toledo) railway tragedy, in which 69 people died.

The former minister responded on the social network X with a message in which he wrote that it is "a useless exercise to ask the drug trafficker's friend for elegance" and that demanding Feijóo to "at least not lie is even more useless." He also said: "I hope that on November 29, citizens will put this individual of no morals in his place."

Puente accompanied that attack with the resolution of the Provincial Electoral Board of Valladolid, in which his resignation as head of the PSOE list for that province was accepted. However, that decision does not change his immediate situation in Congress: he remains a deputy because, with the Cortes dissolved, the party could not replace him, and he remains a substitute member of the Permanent Deputation while only three weeks of the legislature remain.

Feijóo attributes the resignation to the polls; Puente justifies it by the calendar and the act

Feijóo had said on 'El Hormiguero', on Antena 3, that Puente did not resign out of empathy for the victims, but because the polls predicted a PSOE debacle. He also stressed that, in any case, Puente remained a deputy and a member of the Permanent Deputation.

Puente denied that interpretation and maintained that, "under normal circumstances," he would have ceded the seat to the next person on the list for Valladolid, but that, with "20 days" left until the elections and being a substitute for the Permanent Deputation, he was not going to leave the PSOE "with one less person." "I think it's quite understandable. I have already renounced the candidacy; I think very few other things can be asked of me," he added.

Attends Congress for a check-up and responds to the doubt about Sánchez

Puente went to Congress this Thursday, although only for "a medical check-up," as he explained to journalists in the Chamber's courtyard. He also specified that he will continue as a PSOE militant and will help "from another angle, from the little corner" that he is assigned, but not in institutions.

Asked about the opposition's doubts as to whether the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, knew of his resignation in advance, Puente replied: "The opposition always thinks the worst, but almost never gets it right."