In Spain, a deputy government minister and the president of the public company that manages the railway service (Renfe) they resigned for the controversies relating to an order for dozens of trains that would have been too large to pass through the tunnels of the regions in which they were to be used.
The trains ordered by Renfe, which had an estimated cost of almost 260 million euros, were intended to operate on the railways of the Asturias and Cantabria regions in the north of the country. Asturias and Cantabria are mostly mountainous territories, where the oldest railway tunnels were built in the 19th century and therefore are narrower than current standards, and the new trains would have been too big to pass through: as soon as the designers realized the error, the work was stopped, and the trains were never built.
On Monday, amid much controversy, Transport Minister Raquel Sánchez Jiménez accepted the resignations of the Secretary of State (i.e. Deputy Minister) for Transport, Mobility and Urban Development Isabel Pardo de Vera and Isaías Táboas, the president of Renfe .
In June 2020 Renfe decided to purchase 31 new trains to enrich the fleet intended for short and medium-haul transport, 21 of which destined for Cantabria, whose capital is Santander, and the others for Asturias, where Oviedo is located. The order was commissioned to the Basque company CAF for an estimated cost of 258 million euros. In 2021, however, CAF realized that in the design phase some elements had been made errors and the trains he was supposed to build were higher than the width of the oldest railway tunnels in the network, so he stopped their construction.
The news that incorrect technical specifications had been provided in the order and that the new trains would be too big to run on local lines was widespread at the end of last January. The controversy that has arisen in the media has put some pressure on the government.
In response, Transport Minister Raquel Sánchez Jiménez had already preventively removed two executives from Renfe and Adif, the public company that owns the railway infrastructure; the ministry had then opened an investigation to clarify who was responsible for the design errors.
The government claims the error was caught in time to avoid losing public money. However, the need to redesign the new trains will delay production and consequently delivery, with the result that the first ones will be delivered in 2026, two years later than originally planned.
Sánchez accepted the resignations of Pardo de Vera and Táboas shortly before a meeting with the presidents of Cantabria and Asturias, who are now lobbying to speed up the construction of the trains. Meanwhile, he announced that until the new trains are delivered, short-haul train service in the two communities will continue to be free, as part of public subsidies introduced in the summer of 2022 to alleviate the effects of rising inflation.
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