“You cannot monitor 24 hours 15,000 kilometers of network, but you will have to put more means.” The phrase left her yesterday during an interview on Antena3 the president of Renfe, Álvaro Fernández de Heredia, and is interesting for several reasons. First for what he says. Second, for how he says it. And third (and fundamental), when he says. The rail operator complaint comes after the bird line between Madrid and Seville lived chaotic hours on Sunday for the theft of copper cable at various points of the layout.
What happened is serious, but it reveals something more worrying: how difficult it is to shield a network thousands of kilometers.
Collapse on the Madrid-Seville line. The bird line between Madrid and Seville (the Dean of the Spanish High Speed Network) did not go through its best moment on Sunday night and Monday morning. Delays Stakes arrested for hours. Collapsed stations. And more than 16,000 affected passengers. Although the collapse coincided with an incident starring an Iryo train, both Adif and the Minister of Transportation, Óscar Puente, soon related to what happened to the theft of cable on the line.
“A serious sabotage act”. On Sunday night, with the bird line between Madrid and Seville still knocked out, Óscar Puente already spoke of a “severe act of sabotage” and pointed specifically to the theft of cable at several points distributed within a radius of around 10 kilometers. The thefts were recorded in five different locations distributed between PK 102+200 and 92+800, in the province of Toledo. In total, thieves took 150 m of copper cable.
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A booty of 300 euros. The big question that was bouncing on Sunday and has continued to do so yesterday and today is what is the reason behind what bridge closets “sabotage.” The copper has revalued coinciding with the tariff war unleashed by Trump, but a priori the metal stolen in the Toledo line is rather scarce. The Government Delegation has made accounts and calculates that its value barely reaches 300 euros, so it has suggested that the real objective was to “block the road.” “That cable, which has very little value, is optimal for primar service to the line,” ditch.
Puente insists on talking about “a coordinated action” perpetrated by someone who “knew what was going” while the issue of the political debate. The PP has even related to the “obvious deterioration” of public services and has demanded an “audit of the entire network.” Beyond the political sand or investigation that has already opened a court of Toledo, what happened in the bird line between Madrid and Seville raises a fundamental question:
Is it so easy to steal on the network? It is not the first time that the rail network suffers a robbery or sabotage. In 2022 the Civil Guard arrested a band that was dedicated to stealing copper in the AVE line in Valladolid, Palencia and Burgos. In total it had been made with a boot of 185,000 euros. And years before, in 2015, he had already arrested 28 people from a Madrid organization related to the theft of more than 30,000 m of rail cable in several communities. In that case it was estimated that their “blows” had cost about 840,000 euros.
The Rodalies case. The above are only two examples that can be easily found in the newspaper library. There are more, distributed by different latitudes of Spanish geography, and not only affect the high speed network. Just a year ago without going any further Catalonia suffered the theft of 40 meters of cable on the Rodalies network at 300 m from the Montcada-Bifurcació station. The incident in turn caused an over -teaching that ended up affecting the service.
Yesterday Europa Press echoed a balance of the security forces that shows that only in 2024 registered 4,433 robberies of copper wiring and conductive materials, 87% more than a five years ago. In total, 987 people were arrested and investigated, double that in 2019. The balance is general and is not only related to the robberies that affect the rail network, but still gives an approximate idea of how frequent these types of crimes are and also of how they could affect the increase in the Price of copper.
A great network, a great challenge. The key was given yesterday by Fernández de Heredia during his interview in Antena3: Spain has a wide (wide) railway network and that is at the same time an opportunity and a huge security challenge. The ADIF and ADIF AV controlled map covers 15,519 kilometers of network, of which 9,984 are electrified and just over 3,700 high -speed connections of different types.
And that is just the Railway Network owned by ADIF. To control them in 2021 the agency tendered a contract for surveillance and security services for three years (from April 2022 to March 2025) that amounted to 210.8 million euros. But still the challenge of monitoring the entire network is considerable. The bridge itself has explained that the 150 meters of stolen cables over the weekend were removed from difficult access areas, between forest and olive groves.
“We will have to put more means”. “You cannot monitor 24 hours 15,000 kilometers of network, but more means will have to be put to avoid it because the disorder caused by these robberies to travelers is very high,” Renfe president insisted yesterday. In the past and before terrorist threats the government came to use the army to monitor the lines, as happened in July 2005, after the attacks suffered in London.
Images | Nelso Silva (Flickr) and Ministry of Transportation (X)
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