Spain’s transport minister has said the country’s rail network suffered “an act of serious sabotage” after vital signalling cable was stolen over the busy bank holiday weekend, bringing severe delays to high-speed services between Madrid and Seville that affected more than 10,000 travellers.
Government sources said the problems on the line between the capital and the southern region of Andalucía had been caused by the theft of copper cable from five different locations in the Toledo area, south of Madrid, late on Sunday.
They said that while the cables that had been targeted had little monetary value – being worth a total of around €300 (£256) – they were essential to the safety of the lines as they allow the system to know where trains are.
“If those safety cables are taken, then the line is blind,” they added. “They’re optimal if you want to put the whole line out of service.”
As the country’s state-owned rail operator, Renfe, and the railway infrastructure company, Adif, rushed to restore services, Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, said: “We have suffered an act of serious sabotage on the high-speed line between Madrid and Seville”. He urged anyone with information to contact the police.
In a radio interview on Monday morning, Puente said the network appeared to have been deliberately targeted. “This is a low-value theft,” he told Cadena Ser. “Whoever did it knew what they were doing because there were no cameras and the financial gain is absolutely negligible compared with the enormous damage.”
The minister said he viewed the incident as “damage” rather than theft, adding that it involved 150 metres of cable.
Álvaro Fernández Heredia, the president of Renfe, said he also felt the theft was suspicious.
“It’s strange and I’m sure the transport ministry and the police will be looking into this because it isn’t something we’ve seen up until now,” he toldRadio Nacional de España.
Asked if he shared Puente’s contention that it was a case of sabotage: “I do … The theft of signalling cable on which the safety infrastructure depends is sabotage, even if it’s just simple theft because it’s an attack on the infrastructure itself.”
The interior ministry said the Guardia Civil had opened an investigation, adding that both that force and the Policía Nacional had long been in contact with Adif as part of a special plan for prevent the theft of copper from the rail network. According to interior ministry statistics, there were 4,433 thefts involving copper and conductive materials last year.
By 9.30am on Monday, Renfe and Adif said the Madrid to Seville line was running again and hoped services would return to normal over the course of the day.
By early Monday morning, Alberto Valero and his family, visiting Spain from Mexico, had spent hours at Madrid’s Atocha station, waiting for a train to Seville.
“We’re here with tourists from everywhere; France, Portugal,” Valero told the Associated Press. “Everyone is at a loss for what to do because of the total disarray.”
The severe delays came a week after Spain and neighbouring Portugal suffered an unprecedented and as yet unexplained power blackout, prompting the opposition conservative People’s party (PP) to accuse the socialist-led government of incompetence.
“We’ve had two events in the past week that are more commonly seen in countries we wouldn’t want to resemble; countries where the government has forgotten about its citizens,” said PP sources.
The PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said thousands of people had been stranded on trains overnight without water.
“This is the second Monday when we’ve had scenes that do not befit the fourth-largest eurozone economy,” he said. “People don’t deserve to be paying more taxes for worse services. Spain needs to function again and that’s my aim.”
In an interview with El País on Sunday, Spain’s environment minister, Sara Aagesen, warned it could take days to discover the reasons for last week’s power outage. She also echoed her view that it was far too soon for opposition parties and others to be pointing the finger at the country’s renewable energy sources as a possible cause.
“Blaming renewable as a [reason for the blackout] seems irresponsible and simplistic to me,” said Aagesen. “Irresponsible because we’re talking about a resource that has been part of our energetic mix for a long time. And, besides, we’ve had very similar power generation on many previous days, with lots of renewables and even with lower demand – and the system has worked perfectly.”
