Rail chiefs say blame for 78 deaths lies with man known to workmates for his prudence
The driver of the train that careered off the rails on Wednesday in an accident that killed at least 78 people was released from hospital on Saturday into the custody of police. Francisco Garzón is accused of multiple manslaughter and, if indicted, could face up to 12 years in jail.
On a visit to Santiago de Compostela, where the crash took place, interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz supported the decision by police to arrest the 52-year-old driver, who was cautioned in hospital on Friday. The minister told a press conference that there were "rational indications" that Garzón was responsible.
After taking legal advice, the lifelong railwayman has refused to make a statement to police. Under law, he has until Sunday evening to give his version to a judge, if he chooses to do so.
Garzón, who suffered a minor head injury in the crash, left hospital as state-run rail companies launched an all-out drive to blame him for the accident and his colleagues expressed disbelief that he could have been responsible. Big money rests on how the disaster is viewed.
State-owned Renfe is in a consortium bidding for a €13bn (£11bn) contract to build a high-speed rail link in Brazil between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The daily El País newspaper reported that the terms of the tender excluded any companies that had "taken part in the operation of any high-speed train system where an accident had occurred" in the preceding five years.
The Alvia series train driven by Garzón was allowed to travel at up to 200km/h on its way to Santiago from Ourense, in the north-west. But Renfe's president, Julio Gómez-Pomar, said that the crash, which took place on a stretch of conventional track, "did not happen on a high-speed line, nor [did it involve] a high-speed train, and therefore it is not a Spanish high-speed rail accident".
The Alvia has a hybrid electric-diesel engine that cannot reach the 310km/h of the AVE train that operates on several other lines in Spain. Video footage shows Garzón's train hurtled into the bend where the accident took place at more than twice the permitted speed of 80km/h. Yet the driver was reported to have been famed among colleagues for his prudence.
A local newspaper, El Correo Gallego, reported that when they saw a train running behind time they would often say: "Here comes Garzón." That could give a different – ironic – sense to an exchange on the driver's Facebook page in which he posted a photograph of his speedometer showing the permitted maximum speed of 200km/h. One of Garzón's friends wrote: "You're going like the bloody clappers, lad. Brake."
Juan Jesús García Fraile, the head of the railway workers' union in Galicia, who visited Garzón in hospital, said: "To go from a top speed of 220 to 80 is not easy, let alone with a curve. And to go from high-speed track to the conventional network is something that does not happen anywhere else in Spain." But Gonzalo Ferre, the president of the railway network operator, said: "No stretch is dangerous if the speed [limit] is respected." He said Garzón should have been applying the brakes 4km before he reached the bend.
His comments highlighted a key unanswered question about the crash. The Alvia 151 train would have been slowed down automatically if it had been travelling on a stretch of track controlled by the automatic, EU-sponsored ERTMS system. ERTMS has been installed along much of the 80km of the Ourense-Santiago line, though it is unclear whether this includes the point at which Ferre said that the driver should have started to brake. For reasons that have not been explained, the system has not been activated for Alvia trains, even though it is in use for another class of trains.
Garzón could potentially face up to a four-year sentence for each of the victims of the crash. But under Spanish law a defendant cannot be given a sentence of more than three times the maximum for the most serious offence with which he is charged.