Spain's Transport Minister Refuses to Resign over High-Speed Rail Disaster That Killed at Least 69

Spain's transport minister, Oscar Puente, has said he will not resign over the high-speed rail collision that has left at least 69 people dead. At a news conference in Madrid on Friday he said he had 'nothing to hide' while repeating the government's vow to get to the bottom of the disaster.

Puente said, 'My duty right now is not to talk about whether I should remain in my position, but to resolve the problem.' He has been facing calls to step down since the tragedy.

The calls to resign have come from political rivals, a trade union and demonstrators who protested outside the transport ministry on Wednesday night.

On Wednesday morning, near the town of Urda in the central Toledo province, a state-operated Renfe high-speed train smashed into the back of another stationary train operated by the Iryo company. Dozens were killed and many more injured.

A preliminary report released by transport investigators late on Thursday found the Renfe train was travelling between 160km/h (99.4mph) and 200km/h when the collision occurred, causing its front carriage to become embedded in the tail of the stationary train.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said earlier on Friday that public trust in Spain's high-speed rail network had been broken and repeated that it was 'unacceptable' that there had been two similar tragedies within a year.

In January, a collision on the same Madrid-Seville route killed 46 people in Adamuz in southern Spain. Wednesday's tragedy was one of the worst rail disasters in Europe's modern history, and Spain's worst crash since 2013.

Puente said on Wednesday that a computer failure at about 08:30 that morning led to the initial halt of six moving trains, including the two trains that subsequently collided. He said the decision to instruct the trains to move again, without any speed restrictions, was 'inexplicable'.

Leaked audio recordings published in Spanish media revealed conversations between train drivers and Madrid's control centre just minutes before the crash. Three recordings appear to show that one high-speed train was given clearance to move even though another train had stalled on the track, about 25km (15 miles) ahead.

The leaking of the audio recordings has been criticised by some Spanish politicians, with Alberto Ibanez, a member of Congress for the left-wing Sumar platform, writing on X that they were 'despicable'.

Meanwhile, Irene Montero, the prime ministerial candidate for the left-wing Podemos party, said responsibility for the crash should not be placed on one worker, adding that train drivers and experts have been warning against the liberalisation of the railway sector for years.

On Friday Puente said he was 'not going to use any worker as a shield'. But he said 'many questions' arose as a result of the tragedy and he wanted to look at them 'one by one'. He added that if the investigation shows there is human error, action will be taken accordingly.