The Secretary of State for Transport, Isabel Pardo de Vera, as well as the president of RENFE, the train company of the government of Spain, resigned after having bought trains for the region of Cantabria and Asturias that do not enter the tunnels in the area. This came after the transport company wanted to modernize the vehicles, for which they allocated 258 million euros to a Basque company to carry them out.
During late January, a journalistic investigation discovered that the specifications given to the company located in the north of Spain they were too wide for these wagons to safely pass through some of the tunnels. The government of the Iberian nation began an investigation that ended with the resignations of the heads of both government agencies.
Due to the changes that have to be made in the designs, the trains will not be ready for the agreed date, which is why it was indicated that production would begin in 2024 to deliver the first units to the agency Spain the first days of 2026. “Three years waiting for the trains and now they tell us that they did their job wrong,” denounced the president of the PP of Cantabria, María José Sáenz to RTVE.
“Not only the old Feve, but also Renfe will be guaranteed free until the moment the trains provided for in the current contract are delivered,” said Adrián Barbón, the president of the Principality of Asturias, one of the affected regions. . In addition, he pointed out that due to the extension of this situation, more vehicles will be added to the original order. “The distribution was 21 for Cantabria and 10 for Asturias, but the extension of the tender allowed another 7 trains that will go to Asturias. There will be a rebalancing in the distribution,” said the politician from this mediterranean region.
The government response
In addition to the changes in these vital positions related to transport, Pedro Sánchez confirmed that mobility between Cantabria and Asturias will be completely free until the first cars are delivered in three years.
He also indicated that “not a single euro of the Spanish people was wasted”, since the error was caught before the manufacture of the vehicles began.for which it was all stopped in time.