Sánchez, the rail disaster and the election: what we don't know yet

According to the BBC, a rail disaster in Spain is weighing on the re-election prospects of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The British broadcaster describes a "succession of crises" hitting the head of government a few weeks before an early general election. That is all we have. No death toll in our dispatch, no established cause, no precise timeline. We will not fill these gaps with guesswork.

We therefore stick to what is certain: a serious accident, people affected, and an election campaign seizing on it. To the victims and their families, respect. To everyone else, questions.

The first, and the oldest: cui bono? A transport catastrophe quickly becomes a weapon in parliamentary combat. Each side looks for the individual culprit: a minister, a manager, a government. It is convenient. The politicians fall, the system stays put. Yet, in our reading, the real question lies elsewhere: which investment trade-offs, which budget choices, what share left to the private sector or to maintaining the network? The dispatch says nothing about this. The inquiry, if it is serious, will have to.

A second, broader angle. Our editorial line invited us to address here the sale of Patriot missiles to Ukraine, approved by Washington for $2.1 billion. That information does not appear in the dispatch we have. We therefore do not back it up and do not present it as established fact. We can only recall the framework of analysis. In the Leninist tradition, arms contracts, sanctions and alliances are the political shell around economic rivalries between great powers (in other words: what the communiqués call "support", the balance sheets also call outlets for sales). The principle is worth keeping in mind: faced with any large military order, ask who supplies, who pays, who cashes in. And do not forget that, on the battlefield of war, it is civilians and soldiers who pay with their lives.

The link to Madrid? It is structural, not factual. A Europe that rearms is a Europe where budgets compete. Every billion earmarked for weapons is a billion not spent elsewhere, rail included. We do not say this is the case in Spain: nothing in our dispatch establishes it. We say that the debate over spending priorities, which the Spanish campaign may reopen, deserves to be raised without squeamishness.

In the meantime, the facts: a weakened government, a vote approaching, a tragedy. The rest belongs to investigators, to journalists on the ground, and to voters. We will return as soon as verifiable material becomes available.