Spanish train drivers call off strike after safety deal
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Under the deal with unions, the Spanish government will invest $2.71 billion to improve railway maintenance, create 3,650 jobs, and strengthen public rail safety.
PHOTO: EPA
MADRID – Spanish unions called off a three-day railway strike on Feb 9 after reaching an agreement with the government over safety and maintenance standards they demanded following two accidents that claimed 47 lives.
The back-to-back disasters in January rocked the sector and raised doubts about the safety of train travel in Spain, which boasts the world’s second-largest high-speed network after China.
Unions called the Feb 9 to Feb 11 strike, accusing the authorities of ignoring warnings about the safety of infrastructure and failing to invest enough in the network.
The movement affected thousands of passengers on the morning of Feb 9, but the Semaf train driver union announced a deal had been struck with the transport ministry, railway infrastructure manager Adif, state operator Renfe and the rail safety agency AESF.
“We have achieved a milestone in rail safety,” a Semaf spokesman told AFP, explaining that the 25-point deal addressed higher investment in infrastructure maintenance and staffing levels.
Under the deal, the government will invest €1.8 billion (S$2.71 billion) to improve maintenance, create 3,650 jobs, and strengthen public rail safety, the transport ministry said in a statement.
“This is an important step to improve Spain’s railway system and secure its future competitiveness,” Transport Minister Oscar Puente said after meeting with union representatives.
The sector was shocked after a collision between two high-speed trains
Two days later, a commuter train in the Barcelona region ploughed into the rubble of a collapsed wall
‘Tired of the system’
Private operators began running passenger trains in Spain in 2021 following the liberalisation of the rail sector, ending Renfe’s decades-long monopoly.
Since then, passenger numbers on some routes have grown noticeably, but the unions say investment in maintenance has not kept up.
“Railway workers have said, ‘Enough, they are tired of the system’,” Mr Arturo Vega of the CSIF union told AFP in Madrid.
“Ten years ago we transported around 10 million travellers, now we’re at a figure of between 22 and 23 million... what this clearly brings is greater wear and tear and the need for more investment.”
Renfe said in a statement that 11.6 per cent of its staff failed to turn up for their morning shifts on Feb 9, but that minimum service requirements had been respected.
These included 73 per cent of long-distance services and 65 per cent of regional trains.
On suburban networks, 75 per cent of trains must run at peak hours, with half of the normal service provided during the rest of the day.
Delayed and cancelled trains disrupted Atocha in Madrid, Spain’s busiest train station, as thousands of passengers crowded the platforms during the morning rush hour.
Ms Victoria Bulgier, an English teacher in her 30s from the United States, told AFP she “perfectly understood” strikers’ demands.
“They should not work in conditions that put them in danger,” she said.
At Barcelona’s main station Sants, fewer passengers were in the concourse than usual, with the strike following weeks of chaos on the north-eastern Catalonia’s ageing commuter network, used by hundreds of thousands of people.
Mr Francisco Cardenas, a Renfe official at the UGT union, told AFP at the station that he had “never lived through a railway crisis like this one” in his 41 years at the company. AFP
