Spain's transport minister, Óscar Puente, resigned on Tuesday following the train crash that claimed 69 lives last week, one of the worst railway disasters in Europe this century.
Puente also announced he was withdrawing his name from the lists for the early legislative elections on 29 November, a ballot in which the Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is trailing in opinion polls. The crash, and another fatal collision earlier this year, have overshadowed campaigning.
The minister had ruled out resigning on several occasions since the disaster. But at the end of a lengthy hearing before lawmakers, he said: "I wish to inform you that I am not only stepping down from my position as minister of transport, but that I am also withdrawing my name from the lists for the early legislative elections on 29 November."
Hours earlier, Puente had used a press conference to present measures aimed at improving safety, saying the government would "work tirelessly to achieve and regain the public's trust in high-speed rail". Spain's high-speed network is the second largest in the world.
The rightwing opposition, which had demanded Puente's resignation, and unions had criticised him for appearing to pin all the blame for the disaster on one control centre operator.
The crash happened on Wednesday outside the village of Urda, about 80 miles south of Madrid, when a train operated by the state-owned company Renfe ploughed into the back of a stationary train belonging to the private Spanish operator Iryo. A failure of an automatic safety system had halted all trains on a 39-mile stretch of track, but a control centre nonetheless authorised the Renfe service to resume its journey.
Among the measures Puente announced were new software for control centres that would issue automatic alerts and make it easier to spot anomalies in traffic, along with an AI agent to oversee the system and "minimise the possibility of human error", a proposal he described as unprecedented. He added that in scenarios where an operator took a decision while the automatic safety system was down, a second operator would have to confirm it.
The train drivers' union Semaf, which has called strikes at Renfe for 10 and 12 November, has denounced a worsening of working conditions and the use of "degraded systems". Critics say investment in maintenance has not kept up with the increase in passenger numbers since the 2021 liberalisation of Spain's rail network, which allowed private companies to break Renfe's decades-long monopoly.
In an apparent recognition of the unions' demands, Puente said the working conditions of control centre operators would be reformed, including their breaks and the monitoring of their fatigue levels. He also announced an aid package of €30m (£25m) for the families of the dead and the scores of people injured in the crash.
Another collision in the southern region of Andalusia in January killed 46 people on the same key line connecting Madrid with the city of Seville, Spain's first high-speed route when it opened in 1992.
