Politics 4 November 2026

Spain's transport minister quits over the Urda crash, and Carlos Cuerpo takes his job until the election

Óscar Puente announced his resignation in Congress on Tuesday and also gave up his place on the Socialist list for 29 November. Pedro Sánchez handed the ministry to first deputy prime minister Carlos Cuerpo, who keeps the economy brief until the vote.

Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, has resigned. He told Congress’s standing committee on Tuesday, after roughly four hours of questions from the other parliamentary groups. He is not only leaving government either: he has also given up his place on the Socialist (PSOE) list for the snap general election on 29 November.

On Wednesday Pedro Sánchez said who takes over. The job goes to Carlos Cuerpo, according to La Moncloa’s note on Sánchez’s statement, first deputy prime minister and economy minister, who will run both ministries until the vote. A royal decree in an extraordinary edition of the state gazette, the BOE, makes it formal.

Two crashes in less than a year

Puente told MPs he made up his mind last week, as soon as the scale of the Urda disaster in Toledo province became clear. The collision between a Renfe AVE and a stationary Iryo train on the Madrid–Andalusia line on 28 October killed 69 people, Spain’s deadliest rail accident in more than a decade.

His case was political rather than technical. A transport minister, he argued, cannot stay on after two serious accidents inside twelve months. The first was at Adamuz, in Córdoba province, in January, with 46 dead. He stayed that time.

What caused the Urda crash is still unknown. The court investigation is sealed, and nothing made public so far puts direct responsibility on the minister.

Thanks on one side, “theatre” on the other

Sánchez thanked him for working “without rest” and said the resignation showed the state’s respect for the victims. The opposition People’s Party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, called it a “teatrillo”, a bit of theatre, and claimed the prime minister knew in advance what Puente would say.

Cuerpo is a technocrat. A career economist, he has been the face of the government’s economic policy, and now inherits the most scrutinised ministry in Madrid less than four weeks before an election in which rail safety will be a campaign issue.

For Portugal the brief matters more than it looks. It is the Spanish ministry in charge of the Lisbon–Madrid high-speed line and the Porto–Vigo link, two projects whose timetables depend on Madrid.

By Tomás Vasconcelos

Image: La Moncloa – Gobierno de España / Wikimedia Commons (attribution)

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