Transport takes action on the matter due to the serious error when designing trains for various autonomous communities, mainly Cantabria and Asturias, which do not fit through the tunnels. It is one of the biggest failures that occurred in the ministry that plans infrastructures. Minister Raquel Sánchez has announced this Saturday that there will be "imminent cessations" in both Renfe and Adif to "assume responsibilities" for these rulings that will mean that the convoys will be operational three years later.
Sánchez has apologized to the Cantabrian citizens, the main victims of these serious errors with the measures. 21 of the 31 planned trains were going to go to the autonomous community. The minister pointed out this Saturday, during a visit to the Castro Urdiales Town Hall, that she had a conversation with President Miguel Ángel Revilla to share her "anger and indignation."
"In the next few hours these dismissals will take place and therefore we will give the explanations at that time," Sánchez advanced. The Minister and the Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Isabel Pardo de Vera, have commissioned an internal audit at both Renfe and Adif to "know and find out in detail what happened."
"All necessary actions" will be taken to reduce convoy delivery times, he added. They are trains that are not manufactured, but in the design phase. But the error will mean that instead of being in operation in 2024, they will be available in 2027. The minister hopes that the final design of the 31 trains will be ready by the summer of this year and that their manufacture can begin immediately, although there is no minimum manufacturing time.
Sánchez has also reported the creation of a working group to follow this process and shorten the delay times, to which he has invited both the Government of Cantabria and Asturias to participate.
The origin of the problem is a gauge error in 31 metric gauge trains, a contract worth 258 million euros, which causes the convoys to not fit through the tunnels. The measurements published in the Adif network statement, which Renfe used to describe the technical characteristics of the new trains in 2019, were wrong. When Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF), the winning company, made progress on the project, it discovered that there was this failure in the heights of the trains and transferred it to Renfe.
The operator chaired by Isaías Táboas confirmed on Friday that it has reached an agreement with CAF to try to solve the error in the gauges of the new trains as soon as possible. In this way, the Railway Safety Agency (AESF) will have to give the go-ahead to the application of a method that does not include Spanish regulations, but the European one, and develop the so-called "comparative method", which consists of using of a train that currently runs on the lines as a reference for the new trains, which Renfe will provide.
CAF will also have to hire a company specialized in the application of this method and the contract between Renfe and the company will have to be modified to introduce a monitoring of the project with that reference train. For its part, Adif must also provide the infrastructure characterization data and commit to keeping it within the same parameters.
