The victims of the Angrois accident left their meeting with the First Vice President and Minister of Economy, Trade, and Business, Carlos Cuerpo, with the same fundamental conclusion: there were no firm commitments and the Government, in their opinion, continues to make no move on the decisions they demand.
Jesús Domínguez, spokesperson for the Alvia 04155 Victims Platform, summarized the meeting as "more of the same" and described it as "correct," but insufficient. According to his version, the State continues to follow the script that, after the 2013 accident, attributed what happened to a human error by the train driver.
The group maintains that this interpretation leaves fundamental flaws uncorrected and, in their opinion, encourages the repetition of errors. Domínguez also pointed out that Spain holds the "world record for high-speed accidents," as the basis of his criticism for the lack of structural changes.
The immediate demand: change the regulation and reopen the investigation
The most concrete request conveyed to the minister was the "urgent" elimination of the regulation that allows trains to travel at 200 kilometers per hour with the Asfa system as a backup when ERTMS or LZB, typical of high-speed rail, fail.
Domínguez explained that the Ministry scheduled a new meeting for next Tuesday, after studying the proposed measures. But he warned that this timeline, for now, does not resolve the core of the conflict: if there is no reopening of the independent investigation into Angrois, the platform will not attend further calls because they are "tired of tall tales and stories."
In that context, he insisted that the priority is not to create new service offices, but to prevent more victims.
Commissions, technicians, and the dispute over who investigates
At the meeting, the Ministry proposed the creation of the figure of the Ombudsman for Victims of Collective Transport Accidents. Domínguez recalled that, he said, former minister Ana Pastor had already established the service office and the victims' statute, and argued that the essential thing is to repeat the investigation.
To this end, the platform requested an independent technical-scientific commission composed exclusively of independent European experts. Domínguez warned that, if Adif or the Railway Accident Investigation Commission (CIAF) are consulted, "they will deceive them," since, he affirmed, they prepared the initial reports and, in his opinion, evaded the root causes.
Consequently, it demanded the exclusion of any technician or position linked to Adif, Renfe, or the State Railway Safety Agency (AESF), considering them "judge and party." It also criticized the new independent authority, arguing that the Minister of Transport himself proposes its president.
The platform linked this criticism to the infringement procedures opened by the EU, the community audit, and the warning letter from the European Commissioner for Transport, cited for the lack of risk assessments on the railway network.
Safety versus commercial exploitation
Domínguez accused the railway system of prioritizing "commercial priority" over passenger safety. As he explained, in Angrois, the system was disconnected due to the delays it caused, and after the Urda accident, trains were forced to run without nominal protection to avoid delays to Seville.
"If to get the system operational they have to cut the Madrid-Seville line for a month, let them cut it and people go by bus, but our lives are at risk," he stated, although the platform did not set an immediate operational decision for the Ministry with that intervention.
From a technical perspective, Jorge Iglesias, a retired CEDEX official and specialist in the first European ERTMS laboratory, called for the immediate withdrawal of the Asfa backup system and proposed a National Plan for the progressive withdrawal and implementation of ERTMS on the entire conventional and high-speed network.
Iglesias added that the Madrid-Seville line uses an "obsolete" LZB and noted that it has registered 170 failures so far this year. He proposed interrupting the service for a month—"if necessary"—to dedicate Adif resources to definitively implement ERTMS, while the matter remains pending institutional decision.
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