Funeral of victims of the accident in Spain is today (before strike)

A toledo Cathedral today receives the “Miss funeral” of the 69 victims of the railway accident in Urda, on the eve of the first general strike in 14 years in Spain and the start of the election campaign on 29 November.

The Mass will include the presence of the Kings of Spain, Felipe VI and Letizia Ortiz, the Deputy Prime Minister, Carlos Cuerpo, the Minister of Education and former mayor of Toledo, Milagros Tolon, the president of the regional government of Castile-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, and the president of the Popular Party and opposition leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

The Prime Minister and leader of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), Pedro Sánchez, will not be in Toledo Cathedral today.

Presided by the Archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Carre Chaves, the funeral mass aims to remember and honor the 69 people who died in the accident, one of them of Portuguese nationality.

Ten people remain hospitalized following the accident.

The high-speed train accident of 28 October in Urda, Toledo, stopped the pre-campaign of early legislative, which the parties resumed with some rallies and interviews last weekend, before the official start of the campaign, next Friday.

Pedro Sánchez classified the accident as unacceptable and the Minister of Transport, Oscar Puente, ended up resigning last Tuesday.

This was the second accident this year with high-speed trains in Spain, after in January, in Adamuz, Córdoba, 46 people died in another collision.

“ It is not acceptable for a country like Spain to suffer two high-speed rail accidents in the same year,” Pedro Sánchez said twice in the days following that in Urda.

Spain has the largest high-speed network in Europe and the second in the world, after China.

The generality of the parties (with the exception of the extreme right Vox) immediately cancelled the public agenda, especially the pre-campaign actions for the legislative ones of 29 November.

The summits of the largest national parties, quoted by the Spanish press, recognized that, in addition to respecting the country’s grief and shock, it was also necessary to “recalculate campaign strategies and agendas”.

Until the accident, the campaign had been marked by issues such as housing, immigration and the illegal entry of thousands of people into Ceuta, the sustainability of pensions, the pacts of the People's Party (PP, right) with Vox or agreements and disruptions between forces to the left of the socialists.

The elections were convened on October 5 by Pedro Sánchez, in the midst of protests in the streets for the housing crisis and after right-wing forces had failed the parliament government decrees with measures for this area.

The campaign will officially start next Friday, the day after Parliament's standing committee debate and vote on housing decrees, which the government has now re-approved.

The most recent polls, already made after the railway accident, continue to give the PP as the most voted party on November 29, but without an absolute majority, which will be possible with an alliance with Vox. The two parties have already assumed that they will join if necessary to withdraw the left from the government.

Even before the official start of the campaign and the return of housing decrees to parliament, Spain will live on Wednesday the first general strike in the last 14 years.

It will be a “general strike for housing”, convened by the country’s two major trade unions, and responds to an appeal from the associations gathered in the Confederation of Inquiry Trade Unions, which defend the right to housing and have mobilized thousands of people in protests since September 23.