The horrific train accident that occurred on the high-speed network, which is considered to be the safest and most modern in the railway history of the European country Spain, has left the entire country in deep shock. Just six days after the death of 69 innocent civilians in a tragic train accident on October 28 in the southern area of ​​the capital Madrid, the country's Transport Minister Oscar Puente on Tuesday announced his formal resignation from his post. Addressing lawmakers in the lower house of parliament, Puente announced his resignation with a heavy heart. After this tragedy, there was a huge outcry against the government from the Spanish Parliament, opposition parties and the victims' families and the demand for the immediate resignation of the Transport Minister was gaining momentum. By taking this step, Puente has tried to calm the increasing political pressure on the government while accepting moral responsibility. Delivering his farewell speech in Parliament, Transport Minister Oscar Puente said, "How can a transport minister continue in his post in a developed and technologically leading country like Spain, where two major and fatal train accidents occur within less than a year? This is not just a matter of technical failure, but is directly a question of political dignity, public morality and deep sympathy for the families of the victims of the accident." After this statement of Puente, the corridors of Parliament became completely silent. This resignation is being considered a major political blow for the current government of Spain because Puente was counted among the most influential and vocal leaders in the cabinet of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. How the accident happened on the Madrid-Seville line: Two trains came on the same track due to failure of the communication system. According to the preliminary investigation report, this terrible accident occurred on October 28 when the state-of-the-art communication system, which is considered very important for automatic signaling and safety on the Madrid-Seville high-speed rail corridor, suddenly came to a complete halt. After the digital signaling failed, as per protocol, the Central Traffic Controllers located in the capital Madrid took command of the movement of trains manually. Meanwhile, there was a huge human error on the part of the control room and the controllers gave green signal to a high-speed train coming from behind at high speed, while at a short distance on the same track, another passenger train was already stopped due to a technical fault. By the time the speedy train came to the braking position, it was too late and it collided with another train standing on the track with full force. The collision was so severe that many bogies of both the trains derailed and ran over each other and pieces of metal scattered hundreds of meters away. In this tragic accident, 69 passengers died on the spot or during treatment in the hospital, while dozens of people were seriously injured. Rescue workers had to use cutters to pull out bodies and injured from the debris, and rail traffic on the Madrid-Seville route was completely disrupted for several days. Two major rail accidents in one year: 46 people lost their lives due to derailment in January. This was not the first accident this year on the Madrid-Seville line, which has exposed Spain's rail safety system. Earlier in the month of January this year, a passenger train going south on the same route suddenly went out of control and derailed. After derailment, it collided with another train coming from the opposite direction. That horrific train accident in January had resulted in the tragic death of 46 passengers and sparked a heated debate across the country regarding safety standards. The judicial and technical investigation report of that accident had still not been fully made public when exactly nine months later, another terrible accident occurred on the same main line. After two consecutive major railway accidents that took the lives of more than 115 citizens, people in the country took to the streets to protest against rail safety mechanisms, budget cuts and gross disregard for maintenance standards. Unions and railway employees had also alleged that huge attention is being given to the expansion of the network, but the upgradation and routine maintenance of old tracks and signaling software is being continuously ignored. This was the reason that after the second accident, Transport Minister Oscar Puente had no moral or political basis left to continue in office. The world's second largest high-speed network, a stain on three decades of impeccable record Spain's high-speed rail network, known as 'AVE' (Alta Velocidad Española), has been the biggest global recognition of the country's modern infrastructure and a symbol of national pride. After China, Spain operates the world's second largest high-speed rail network and Europe's longest, with a total network of about 4,000 kilometers. More than three decades ago, in 1992, the country's first high-speed train service was launched between Madrid and Seville, which completely changed the way of traveling in Spain. For more than three decades since its inception the safety record of the Spanish high-speed network had been almost spotless with not a single fatal accident recorded. However, in the year 2026, these two major accidents that happened one after the other on the same line have tainted this glorious and spotless record of Spain forever. International transport experts say traffic density has increased rapidly following the privatization of Spanish railways and the entry of several foreign operators on the tracks, while the central signaling system is proving unable to cope with the increasing pressure. After the resignation of Oscar Puente, the Spanish government has now ordered a detailed technical audit of the entire high-speed network and an independent review of the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system so that the lost confidence of passengers on this world's busiest rail network can be restored.