Abascal maintains his pre-campaign rally in Valladolid after the tragedy in Urda, Toledo, calls Puente "minister of death" and denounces that they want to "gag us" with mourning

With emergency teams still working among the train wreckage and a provisional toll of at least 68 fatalities, Santiago Abascal held his pre-campaign rally in Valladolid this Wednesday. The president of the far-right Vox used his speech to blame the Government for the Urda railway tragedy, calling Óscar Puente "minister of death" and asking his followers to distrust any explanation from the Executive before the November 29 elections.

The event, held at the Valladolid Fair, began with attendees standing while La muerte no es el final (Death is not the end), the composition with which the Armed Forces remember their fallen, played. Abascal extended his condolences to the families of the victims and his support to the injured and those who still had no news of their loved ones. He then linked these condolences with the justification for maintaining the electoral agenda, which the rest of the main political forces had suspended.

"Some want to take advantage of the mourning to gag us and keep us silent," he stated. The far-right leader presented the continuation of his rallies as a commitment to defend Spaniards from a "criminal organization," referring to the Government. "That's why we are here and that's why we are not willing to suspend an electoral campaign," he added.

The speech lasted about ten minutes and Abascal was the only speaker, instead of following the usual format with other leaders speaking before him. He was accompanied, among others, by the vice president of the Junta de Castilla y León, Carlos Pollán, and the head of the list for Congress for Valladolid, Pablo Sáez. This change of format maintained the electoral event and his attacks on the Executive, which he accused of spending public money on "escort ladies instead of fixing the train tracks, as happened in Adamuz," without providing evidence to support that connection with the accident.

Accusations before knowing the causes of the accident

Abascal has accused the Government of rushing to find a "scapegoat" or a "fall guy" by raising the possibility of human error. "Then we saw that no, it was a system failure," he maintained, only to immediately admit that he did not know what had happened. "I don't know. We don't know," he admitted. He then expressly introduced the electoral calendar into his response to the tragedy. "We cannot believe absolutely anything this Government says before November 29," he asked those present.

The first explanations from the Ministry of Transport place a breakdown of the LZB railway protection system before the crash and point to a possible irregular authorization to resume circulation from the Adif control center in Atocha. These are issues that must be clarified during the investigation. The existence of a technical failure, by itself, does not rule out an incorrect subsequent action in railway traffic management.

The independent authority in charge of the technical investigation has precisely called for caution. Its president, Gonzalo Julián Guillén Espejo-Saavedra, explained to Efe that it is "too early" to advance hypotheses and that investigators are gathering information both at the accident site and at the control center. "I prefer to act with caution and not make statements until I have sufficiently verified information," he said.

This ongoing work contrasts with the responsibilities that Abascal has taken for granted from the podium. The leader of the far-right Vox has brought together the Toledo accident, the Adamuz accident, the floods, and the blackout in the same accusation against the Executive. "Corruption kills" and "climate fanaticism also kills," he proclaimed. He also stated that the tragedies could have been avoided by maintaining the tracks, building infrastructure against floods, and "not playing at putting up windmills."

The far-right leader has also used the financing of railway projects abroad to fuel his complaint about the abandonment of Spanish infrastructure. "1.5 billion of those Spanish taxes go to pay for railway structures and the subway in Morocco, Uzbekistan, and Cairo," he stated. "It is a real insult to Spaniards," he added, before arguing that what the Spanish population needs is being given to other countries.

Abascal has omitted that these operations include repayable loans aimed at promoting the activity of Spanish companies abroad, as Efe Verifica has documented. The Council of Ministers' agreements include, for example, loans approved in 2019 for projects in Morocco and Uzbekistan, and another of up to 227.8 million authorized in December 2024 to modernize Cairo's subway material. They are financed through the Fund for the Internationalization of the Company and must be repaid. Their existence also does not prove that this money was diverted from the maintenance of the accident-stricken line.

The far-right Vox repeats its response from Adamuz

The decision to maintain the pre-campaign reproduces the position that the far-right Vox adopted after the Adamuz accident, which left 46 dead last January. At that time, it distanced itself from the suspension of events agreed upon by the other seven parties running in the Aragonese elections. This Wednesday, it has again presented the interruption of electoral activity as an attempt to silence its denunciations, despite the fact that other parties that have suspended their agendas have also demanded explanations, investigations, and accountability.

To defend that decision, Abascal has compared the holding of his events with the daily work of other professionals. "Vox does not cancel its agenda because it is not celebrating, it is working," he stated, before mentioning train drivers, bakers, and those who have to open a business. At the same time, he has asked Pedro Sánchez to suspend his "little dances" and Puente to stop posting on X. The criticism of railway management has been accompanied by personal disqualifications and a call to reject in advance the Government's explanations throughout the pre-campaign.

The offensive by the far-right party has also reached the courts. Vox has filed a complaint in Orgaz against Adif officials for possible crimes of reckless homicide and reckless injuries, aimed at the operators who would have authorized the resumption of circulation, their superiors, and those responsible for safety protocols. The party requests to intervene as a popular prosecution and to preserve the evidence. The filing of the document does not imply its admission or prove the responsibilities it denounces; the judicial investigation of the accident was already open.

After the rally, Abascal went with other representatives of his party to the Plaza Mayor of Valladolid to participate in the minute of silence called at 8:00 p.m. by the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces. The electoral event ended with the national anthem.