Malaga father urges Transport Minister to 'take responsibility once and for all' following son's death in Urda train crash

After several days of agonising waiting, during which the family never ceased searching for the young man, the family received confirmation of David's death. His father has now charged against the Transport Ministry for the state of the rail infrastructure.

In the letter, which he shared on his social media accounts, Pedro Jesús Reina addresses Puente: "Please take a close look at this photo and notice the look of happiness on this young man's face after achieving his great goal in life, which was to become part of the great family of Spanish railway workers."

David's father then directly questions the ministry's leadership: "Put your hand on your heart and ask yourself in all honesty whether it is fair that, due to the appalling management of your ministry, with you at the helm, I should now be the one looking after the ashes of that very same boy, my son."

"You're the one claiming to be dismayed? Do you take me for a fool or what?" Pedro Jesús Reina asks. "What I demand is that you finally, once and for all, take responsibility for failing to allocate the necessary resources to upgrade and renovate infrastructure that was already falling apart at the seams. Or have we not learnt anything from Adamuz?"

In the letter, he also criticises Puente's absence at the support centre for the families of those killed in the tragedy: "You didn't have the decency to show up, even for a short while, to the support centre set up by Renfe at the El Buen Pastor parish hall in Toledo."

Pedro Jesús Reina also pays tribute to the emergency response in the area of the accident, where the relatives were looked after "with the utmost care and kindness by Renfe staff, the local residents, civil protection staff, psychologists, the Red Cross, security personnel, the Guardia Civil and so many, many people who looked after all our families while we waited patiently for the terrible news".

The letter concludes with a firm demand in memory of David and all victims: "I demand this on behalf of my son, who died in the accident, and on behalf of all those victims and families devastated by this terrible tragedy which, as I have said time and again, could have been avoided."

David Reina was 22 years old. He grew up in the Las Chapas area and had been living in Madrid for almost two years, where he worked as a train mechanic for Renfe.

The young man was travelling in carriage number 8 of the AVE bound for Seville, where he planned to make a stopover to see family and friends before heading to Malaga to enjoy a few days' rest.

His family lost contact with him at around 8.30am on 28 October, just a few minutes before the fatal collision between the high-speed train and an Iryo train. When they realised that hours were passing without a response, his family and friends launched a desperate social media campaign to locate him, providing a detailed description and appealing for the public's help.

While his parents rushed to the scene of the accident in Toledo to speed up the search, the rest of his relatives waited in Malaga, glued to their phones, after filing a missing person report.

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