Illa Pushes Sánchez to Replace Renfe Chief After Puente Exit

Catalonia’s Socialists are pressing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to replace the head of Renfe (Spain’s state railway operator), according to ABC, which cited sources in the Govern (the Catalan government) and the Transport Ministry. Salvador Illa, president of the Generalitat (Catalonia’s government) and leader of the PSC (Catalan Socialists), wants the post back after Óscar Puente left the ministry.

Renfe president Álvaro Fernández Heredia is still in office. Puente, a former transport minister, asked his successor Carlos Cuerpo last week to keep him, ABC reported.

Two resignations and two rail accidents

The resignations of Puente and of Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña, the former president of Adif (Spain’s rail infrastructure manager), came after the accidents at Adamuz (Córdoba) and Urda (Toledo). Attention has since turned to Fernández Heredia, who worked with Puente at Valladolid city hall.

ABC said PSC headquarters at Pallars, 191 sees the vacancy left by Puente as the best chance to take back control of Renfe.

The Rodalies crisis behind Illa’s push

In January, a crash at Gelida (Barcelona) killed a train driver and left parts of the Barcelona metropolitan area without Rodalies (Catalonia’s commuter rail service) for several days. Illa pointed at Renfe as responsible. His Presidency minister, Albert Dalmau, was acting president while Illa was in hospital, and Dalmau told Puente that Renfe had to take responsibility immediately, according to ABC.

Puente then handed over two officials: Josep Enric García Alemany, operations director of Rodalies, and Raúl Míguez Bailo, Adif’s general director of operations. He called the exits “the first” and a turning point. ABC reported that they remained the only people to take responsibility for the shutdown of the Catalan network. Illa considered the two dismissals insufficient, the paper said, and kept quiet while never giving up on seeking more.

Why the Renfe chair matters to the PSC

ABC noted that the Renfe presidency has traditionally gone to someone linked to the PSC. When Sánchez took office in June 2018, the Catalan Socialists placed historian Isaías Taboas at the head of the company. After he resigned five years later, in 2023, Illa installed party colleague Raül Blanco, while Raquel Sánchez, also Catalan, was transport minister. Blanco lasted 23 months.

Fernández Heredia replaced Blanco in January 2025, with Puente already minister. His appointment prompted debate because his career had been mainly in road transport. He is a civil engineer who managed Madrid’s municipal bus company EMT and earlier ran AUVASA, the Valladolid bus company, while Puente was mayor there. Critics argued that leading Renfe requires specific knowledge of rail operations, maintenance, safety and infrastructure.

In February 2025, Popular Party senator Juan José Sanz Vitorio questioned publicly why Puente had put someone whose management experience came from a smaller firm in charge of a company of about fifteen thousand workers. Days before his resignation, Puente repeated his confidence in both Fernández Heredia and Marco de la Peña, ABC said. Marco de la Peña has long been seen as close to Más Madrid, the party for which he served as a Madrid city councillor.

Source: ABC