Ten years of waiting and an unexpected twist: the Prosecutor's Office charges the driver and exonerates Adif in the Alvia trial

All the blame? of the machinist. A human error and no responsibility of Adif, the railway administrator, for not applying the most demanding security measures and disconnecting the automatic braking system in a section with a tricky curve; a danger that other train conductors had already insistently warned about. With this (unexpected) argument, the Prosecutor's Office was taken down this week in the final stretch of the macro-trial for the Angrois accident, to the surprise and indignation of the different platforms in which victims, relatives and those affected who exercise the popular accusation and fought tooth and nail and teeth, -and many rallies before Congress or knocking on the doors of the European Union- to sit Andrés Cortabitarte, former security director of Adif, in the dock.

The surprise came on Wednesday the 20th, on the first day of the conclusions of the macro-criminal trial for the Alvia accident -started in October 2022- after seven years of investigation and long hearings with the shocking testimonies of the survivors and the relatives of the 80 victims who were traveling on the Alvia 04155 train from Madrid to Ferrol on July 24, 2013. They did not arrive at the Santiago station, which was barely 3,000 meters away. The convoy crashed in the A Grandeira (Angrois) curve at 191 kilometers per hour, double what could and should be done in a complicated section, without beacons, with little physical signaling or additional automatic braking mechanisms under the expertise of one person: Francisco José Garzón Amo, the driver.

The prosecutor, Mario Piñeiro, opened the conclusions phase endorsing the arguments of the State Attorney's Office -which defends Adif- and withdrew the request for 4 years in prison for Cortabitarte -identical to the one that he does maintain against the driver- for the “legal gibberish” of the security protocols, as he proclaimed in the room to the surprise of a hundred lawyers representing the parties. At the time, he attacked the other defendant for answering an “irrelevant” call. For the Prosecutor's Office, Cortabitarte has no criminal responsibility despite having signed a report certifying the “one hundred percent” security of a line whose risks had not been studied or authorizing the disconnection of the ERTMS system -automatic braking- since it acted as a ” bureaucrat”.

With this change in the criteria of the Public Ministry, the railway administrator -which depends on the Ministry of Transport- would not have any criminal responsibility in the greatest railway tragedy in Spain in democracy, after that other derailment in 1944 in Torre del Bierzo, whose number of victims never knew for sure. It does not agree with the testimony of the head of security of the European Railway Agency, Christopher Carr, who in December stated that Adif and Renfe should have taken measures since “European regulations required an assessment of the risk” of the curve. It was not done.

loneliness of the driver

The prosecutor in the Alvia case unleashed all the artillery against the driver: Francisco José Garzón Amo, a veteran driver who made a fatal mistake; answered an “irrelevant” call from the controller to the corporate phone that interrupted him for 100 seconds -just over a minute and a half- to find out what the Pontedeume platform (A Coruña) was like, where a family with two children had to get off. The mother, Lydia M.. and the little daughter passed away. Father Rafael R, returned to a half-empty house with his eldest son and his life broken.

The call came at the worst moment and distracted the engineer from the layout until he had the curve on top of him. He braked, no longer having time to avoid the derailment. Garzón, photographed bloodied and disoriented after the accident, has represented how no one else could be lonely to blame for an accident that claimed 80 lives and cut many others short in sequelae, absences and injuries. The accusations for 80 crimes of homicide and 145 for injuries due to serious professional negligence weigh on him.

Garzón is supported by his own, the machinists union (Semaf), who accompanied him to the gates of the Cidade da Cultura del Monte Gaiás, where the trial was held. For them, their partner is “one more victim” due to human error with a fatal outcome.

Outrage of the victims

Surprise, outrage and disappointment, even. This is how the lawyers of the victims' platforms ultimately pronounced after the change of criteria of the Prosecutor. “Dog does not eat dog”, Manuel Alonso, a lawyer from the Alvia 04155 Victims Platform, graphically proclaimed, referring to the fact that Adif's responsibility would also be that of the Government in which the Public Ministry is framed.

Both the Alvia 04155 Victims Platform and the Association of those affected (Apafas) maintain the request for four years in prison for Andrés Cortabitarte (Adif) and another four for Garzón Amo (engine driver), who insistently asked for “sorry, sorry, sorry” in all your statements. They demand a fair sentence and understand that a single man cannot bear all the responsibility for a catastrophe just for answering “one phone call”.. Ironically, the platform stated in a statement, they attribute the change in position of prosecutor Piñeiro to another “corporate call”, that of his boss: the State Attorney General.

The case, which accumulates more than 50,000 double-sided pages, will be heard for sentencing on July 27: a decade after the tragedy in which victims and relatives have still not been able to reach the final stage.. Those affected, who feel abandoned by the Fiscalía, now look to the head judge of Santiago's Penal 2 room, Elena Fernández Currás, who will dictate his fall in autumn.