Error means new local trains won't arrive in Cantabria and Asturias until 2026

Spain's Ministry of Transport has said that €258 million worth of commuter trains ordered to bolster Cercanías and Media Distancia services in Cantabria and Asturias will not be rolled out until 2026, because they did not fit the dimensions of tunnels, meaning a delay of two years.

Understandably, there was indignation in both Cantabria and Asturias when the news of the cock-up emerged, with many in the Spanish press and social media suggesting that the regional transport authorities had wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer's money on trains that were too wide for tunnels in the region.

However, Xavier Flores, Spain's General Secretary of Infrastructure, has denied this, insisting instead that they were too small. "It is not that they were designed too wide, they would never be designed if they did not fit inside the tunnel."

Speaking to transport executives in Cantabria and Asturias on Wednesday February 8th, he did however concede that the delay is due to "a technical and complex discussion that could have been more diligent" in adapting the rolling stock to the correct metric width of tunnels in the regions.

Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, said that "they will determine the appropriate responsibilities, one by one, until the final consequences" for this failure and that Renfe and Adif will be thoroughly assessed, during an inquiry to get to the bottom of the debacle and find out what happened and who exactly is to blame.

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Spain's state train operater Renfe has stated that the specifications of the 31 trains, which were awarded to the Gipuzkoan company CAF in 2020, used reference measurements of the gauges used on the network published by Adif, the Spanish state-owned railway infrastructure manager, but these were not applicable for the lines in Asturias and Cantabria.

The error was detected over two years ago, in January 2021, but only recently emerged publicly.

Facing public ridicule and with a public inquiry looming, Renfe and Adif have even begun blaming one another for the error. Adif says that the measurements Renfe specified in the contract included the wrong information. Renfe, for their part, argues the measurements in the contract given to CAF were those previously made by Adif.

"We do not measure the tunnels, we limit ourselves to collecting the measurements from the company that owns the infrastructure and include them in the specifications of the contract," Renfe sources told Asturian newspaper La Nueva España. "The problem is that the 'official' measures of the tunnels do not correspond to reality," they added.

But as is often the case with such public blunders, heads have already rolled. 

Adif announced on Monday that it had sacked the head of its Inspection and Track Technology, whereas Renfe has also removed someone from its Technical and Operations Directorate.