Almost ten months after it began, the trial for the Santiago de Compostela railway disaster ended on Thursday practically the same as it began, with the war on the attribution of responsibilities between the only two defendants, the driver Francisco Garzón Amo and Andrés Cortabitarte, Former Security Manager of the Railway Infrastructure Administrator (Adif). In the final act of the hearing, the intervention of the two defenders, since the prisoners declined to speak, charged again against the other party. “Everything in Adif and everything in Renfe has been done well except for the driver’s conduct,” said Ignacio Sánchez, Cortabitarte’s lawyer. The one from Garzón, Manuel Prieto, denounced the “negligence of Adif” in view of the risk of the accident curve, which was “a clamor”.
Perhaps the marked difference between the duration of the interventions of the defenses is explained by the style of each lawyer, but in the context of the hearing the little more than an hour that Cortabitarte’s lawyer spoke and the nearly three hours of Garzón’s express the current situation. Both defendants entered the special room that the Xunta set up in the City of Culture of Santiago in October for the macro-trial under the request for four years in prison presented by the prosecutor, as well as the private accusations.
A little over a month ago, Cortabitarte got rid of the most weighty accusation, that of the public ministry, which did maintain it for Garzón. It was in the last procedure, in confirming or modifying the conclusions, when the prosecutor Mario Piñeiro dropped the bombshell, after no significant element appeared during the trial that had not been known during the very long investigation.
The rectification of the Prosecutor’s Office unleashed the anger of the victims. This Thursday, in the concentration at the door of the hearing room, they once again made it clear that in their view the responsibility of the former senior official of the public company Adif, a representative of the State, as they emphasized, is greater than that of the driver himself. . Jesús Domínguez, president of the main group of victims, the Platform of Victims of Alvia 04155, has maintained these days, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the tragedy last Monday, that the prosecutor Piñeiro received “orders from above.” At the center of this controversy appears the State Attorney General himself, Álvaro García Ortiz, a former environment prosecutor in Galicia, although he denies having intervened in the case.
However, although the Prosecutor’s Office has returned to the position it had until 2016, when the report of the European Railway Agency aborted at the last moment the plan to try only the driver, the situation is different now. Cortabitarte is still on the bench accused by more than fifty parties and depends, like Garzón, on the sentence.
According to what has transpired, Judge Elena Fernández Currás could issue it next spring, due to the complexity of the case, although judicial times are always relative, as is also the case with the more than two years that, by analogy with the Prestige , it can be calculated that the final decision of the Supreme Court will take as little.
Since the last turn of the prosecution, there was the impression that although Cortabitarte could be sentenced in Santiago, it was more difficult for the Supreme Court not to acquit him. In that high instance, the reason of State, invoked in private and embodied in the force of the facts, can weigh more heavily, since the agreement reached the day after the accident, in the curve itself, the people’s minister Ana Pastor and the head of the opposition, the socialist Pérez Rubalcaba. However, in recent weeks the pressure was once again felt against the conviction only of the train driver of the European Railway Agency, which has an infringement procedure open against Spain.
In addition, in the trial there was another great war, that of civil liability, of 58 million euros, in case the Renfe insurer has to assume it alone or half with that of Adif.
