This is one of the last bridges that the high speed train crosses before entering to Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia. Is not far from Angrois, the location where the Alvia train derailed last summer killing 79 people and leaving more than 150 injured.
The train accident in Angrois represents another shameful episode in the history of Spain, and this viaduct in Ponte Ulla, as many others built for the brand new high speed trains, is a symbol of the continuous failure of a government that insists in spending the money that never had to pretend to be the country that never will. These viaducts are also symbols of the tragedy as well.
Spain drowns in its own absurdity after 40 years of a bad called democracy while public money it has been wasted in bridges, highways, stupid cultural centres with no culture at all and many more. They just forgot an important detail: high speed trains are as essential as a high standard security system to protect the passengers. Public works worth nothing if the investment goes to build super speed rail tracks, amazing bridges, impressive viaducts, but not investing in a proper security system for all these infrastructures. If the Alvia train have had a proper one, nobody would have died the past 24th of July in Angrois, that is a fact.
A few days ago I saw in the news that Cristóbal González, the president of the Victim’s Assotiation of Angrois, cycled all the way from Sevilla to Santiago de Compostela, more than 800km, to give in person a letter to the Judge Luis Aláez who is dealing with the case in Santiago. This letter is simply demanding Justice in the name of all the victims who died in the accident last summer.
So far, the only person considered to be responsible for the accident in Angrois is the train driver. There are no political responsibilities, nor corporate. The company that runs the trains or the security company that controls the speed of the trains are not even being considered, for the moment, to be resposible in any ways for the accident. It looks like in Spain if you are a train driver, you can put the train up to 300km/hour and it’s just up to you if you want to do it and kill 79 people, no one will stop you for doing it. You are free to decide the final destination of your train. (!)
The truth is that high speed trains are forced by law to have a braking security system that gets activated in case of emergency and the train will simply stop by itself if the speed is over the limit. The braking security system that the train is supposed to have didn’t work. And the train derailed. The rest of the story we all know it.
Seven months after the worst train accident in Spain ever, the driver seems to be the one and only resposible for the dead of 79 people, leaving the company that runs the high speed trains in Spain totally free of charge, as well as any politian involved in the decisions taken regarding this trains. That’s why Cristóbal González decided to cycle all the way up to Santiago and talk with Luis Aláez, the Judge in charge of the investigation of the accident. But Cristóbal is not cycling alone, we are all in that bike in a way, because we all demand justice for an accident that should never had happened. But it did happen and there is nothing we change about that, but we just want the responsible people to be judged and pay for it.