Welcome to Spain

kilgram · Jan 19, 2013

What is Spain? Corruption and more corruption, and mainly in the governing party, the conservative party, the party of the thieves.

And now the article of NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/world/europe/corruption-scandals-widen-in-spain.html

Do you really think that the problems of Spain are caused by the welfare? No. The problems of Spain are from its origins from a dictatorship and extremely corrupt governing parties where no one is safe of that corruption.

Some extracts from the article:

On Wednesday, amid another property investigation, the president of Madrids regional government, Ignacio González, revealed that he and his wife purchased a penthouse last month in the holiday resort of Marbella for 770,000 euros, or more than $1 million. Mr. González, who earns 4,800 euros a month, about $6,380, is denying any wrongdoing, as well as any link between his acquisition and the property investigation undertaken by a local judge.
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Another scandal of the governing party, the right in Spain is really clean, eh

Spains governing Popular Party was drawn deeper into a web of corruption scandals this past week, after the Swiss authorities informed the Spanish judiciary that the partys former treasurer had amassed as much as 22 million euros, or $29 million, in Swiss bank accounts.
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Nice

This corruption involves everything, including the son-in-law of the king, other parties like PSOE(the center-right party of Spain) and CiU(the nationalistic Catalan rightist Party)

Vlad Ivx · Jan 19, 2013

kilgram said: ↑

What is Spain? Corruption and more corruption, and mainly in the governing party, the conservative party, the party of the thieves.

And now the article of NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/world/europe/corruption-scandals-widen-in-spain.html

Do you really think that the problems of Spain are caused by the welfare? No. The problems of Spain are from its origins from a dictatorship and extremely corrupt governing parties where no one is safe of that corruption.

Some extracts from the article:

Another scandal of the governing party, the right in Spain is really clean, eh

Nice

This corruption involves everything, including the son-in-law of the king, other parties like PSOE(the center-right party of Spain) and CiU(the nationalistic Catalan rightist Party)
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By far you're not the only one. But don't worry, great changes are on the way for all of Europe. We have reached a point where we have nothing left to lose. Europe will be rewritten from scratch.

Munqi · Jan 22, 2013

You call your politicians liars and thieves (and they are) but then you demand that those same politicians take care of every aspect of your life.

If they are as bad as you say then wouldnt you rather minimize their power over you?

waltky · Jul 25, 2013

Train wreck in Spain kills 78...

At least 78 killed, 131 injured, in Spain train disaster
25 July`13 - A train derailed outside the ancient northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday night, on the eve of a major religious festival, killing at least 78 people and injuring up to 131 in one of Europe's worst rail disasters.

In what one local official described as a scene from hell, bodies covered in blankets lay next to the overturned carriages as smoke billowed from the wreckage after the disaster. Firefighters clambered desperately over the twisted metal trying to get survivors out of the windows, while ambulances and fire engines surrounded the scene. Cranes were still pulling out mangled debris on Thursday morning, 12 hours after the crash. One official source said speeding was a likely cause of the derailment, which occurred as the train reached a curve in the track, but the public works minister said it was too early to draw conclusions on what had happened.

El Pais newspaper cited sources close to the investigation as saying the train was travelling at over twice the speed limit on a sharp curve and Santiago's mayor said the train was probably going too fast. "We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped getting a few injured and bodies out of the train. I went into one of the cars but I'd rather not tell you what I saw there," Ricardo Martinez, a 47-year old baker from Santiago de Compostela, told Reuters. The Santiago de Compostela train operated by state rail company Renfe, which had 247 people on board, derailed as the city prepared for the renowned festival of Saint James, when thousands of Christian pilgrims from across the world pack the streets. The city's tourism board said all festivities, including the traditional High Mass at the centuries-old cathedral, had been cancelled as the city went into mourning following the crash.

Passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station the train approached the curve at high speed, twisted and wagons piled up one on top of the other. "A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realized the train was burning. ... I was in the second wagon and there was fire. ... I saw corpses," he said. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia region, visited the site on Thursday morning. He was due to go to the main hospital later in the day and hold an emergency meeting with local authorities. "In the face of a tragedy such as just happened in Santiago de Compostela on the eve of its big day, I can only express my deepest sympathy as a Spaniard and a Galician," he said in a written statement late on Wednesday.

INVESTIGATION
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Relatives sob outside morgue made for Spain crash
July 25, 2013 Relatives of victims from a train crash in northwestern Spain sobbed and hugged each other Friday near a makeshift morgue in a sports arena for the victims as the death toll rose to 78 and investigators tried to determine the cause.

The train jumped the tracks and at least one passenger told a radio station that it appeared to be going very fast as it went into a pronounced curve while approaching the station in this Catholic shrine city on the eve of a major religious festival. Seventy-three people were found dead at the scene of the accident and four died in hospitals, said Maria Pardo Rios, spokeswoman for the Galicia region's main court. Another person also died, bringing the toll to 78, but no information was immediately available on where, said an Interior Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of ministry policy. At least 141 people were injured some critically after the eight-carriage train carrying 218 passengers derailed about an hour before sunset Wednesday night.

Authorities did not identify any possible accident causes, but a spokeswoman with Spain's Interior Ministry said Thursday that the possibility that the derailment was caused by a terrorist attack had been ruled out. She also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ministry policy. It was Spain's deadliest train accident since 1972, when a train collided with a bus in southwestern Spain, killing 86 people and injuring 112. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, toured the crash scene Thursday with rescue workers and then went to a hospital to visit injured passengers.

A grim Rajoy told reporters that "for a native of Santiago, like me, this is the saddest day." He said investigations had been launched by judicial authorities and the Public Works Ministry to determine the cause as quickly as possible but declined to take questions from reporters. Officials in the city canceled ceremonies for its annual religious festival that attracts tens of thousands of Christians from around the world. "July 24 will no longer be the eve of a day of celebration but rather one commemorating one of the saddest days in the history of Galicia," said Alberto Nunez Feijoo, president of the region of Galicia where Santiago de Compostela is the capital.

Rescue workers spent the night searching through smashed cars alongside the tracks, and Pardo said it was possible that the death toll could go higher. Many of the dead were taken to a makeshift morgue set up in the city's largest indoor sports arena, where police and court officials were identifying the bodies. Relatives of victims sobbed and hugged each other outside at a nearby information point for families seeking news about their missing loved ones.

- See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/relatives-sob-outside-morgue-made-spain-crash#sthash.PwAf2msA.dpuf
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waltky · Jul 25, 2013

Engineer in custody...

Driver in Custody After 80 Killed in Spain Train Crash
July 25, 2013 > Police take train's driver into custody in hospital after dramatic accident which official source says was caused by excessive speed

Police took the driver of a Spanish train into custody in hospital on Thursday after at least 80 people died when it derailed and caught fire in a dramatic accident which an official source said was caused by excessive speed. The eight-car high velocity train came off the tracks just outside the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain on Wednesday night. It was one of Europe's worst rail disasters. The source had knowledge of the official investigation into a crash which brought misery to Santiago on Thursday, the day when it should have celebrated one of Europe's biggest Christian festivals. Authorities canceled festivities as the city went into mourning.

The Galicia region supreme court said in a statement that the judge investigating the accident had ordered police to put the driver in custody and take a statement from him. He was under formal investigation, the court said. Dramatic video footage from a security camera showed the train, with 247 people on board, hurtling into a concrete wall at the side of the track as carriages jack-knifed and the engine overturned. One local official described the aftermath of the crash as like a scene from hell, with bodies strewn next to the tracks.

An overhead view of the wreckage of a train crash is seen near Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain, in this still image from video, July 25, 2013.

The impact was so huge one car flew several meters into the air and landed on the other side of the high concrete barrier. Some 94 people were injured, of whom 35 were in a serious condition, including four children, the deputy head of the regional government said. We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped get a few injured and bodies out of the train. I went into one of the cars but I'd rather not tell you what I saw there, Ricardo Martinez, a 47-year-old baker from Santiago de Compostela, told Reuters. The train had two drivers, the Galicia government said, but it was not immediately clear which one was in hospital and under investigation.

Newspaper accounts cited witnesses as saying one driver, Francisco Jose Garzon, who had helped rescue victims, shouted into a phone: I've derailed! What do I do?. The 52-year-old had been a train driver for 30 years, a Renfe spokeswoman said. Many newspapers published excerpts from his Facebook account where he was reported to have boasted of driving trains at high speed. The page was taken offline on Thursday and the reports could not be verified.

http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-...r-78-killed-in-spain-train-crash/1709939.html
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waltky · Jul 26, 2013

Spanish Train Driver Bragged About Speed...

Spanish Train Inquiry Focuses on Driver With a Taste for Speed
July 25, 2013 > FRANCISCO GARZÓN AMO IMAGINED FLYING PAST AUTHORITIES: REPORT

The train driver did little to hide his taste for speed. He posted a photograph of a locomotive speedometer needle stuck at 200 kilometers, or about 125 miles, per hour on Facebook last year, boasting that the reading “has not been tampered with” and openly relishing the idea of racing past the authorities. “Imagine what a rush it would be traveling alongside the Civil Guard, and passing them so that their speed traps go off,” he wrote, in all capitals. “Hehe, that would be quite a fine for Renfe, hehe,” referring to his employer, the Spanish rail company.

Now that train driver, Francisco José Garzón Amo, a veteran with more than three decades of experience, is under investigation by a judge in connection with one of Europe’s worst rail accidents in recent years. In a chilling video from a security camera, the passenger train he was driving rounded a curve at high speed on Wednesday night, tumbling violently off the track, slamming against a curved wall and piling up in a twisted wreck. Eighty people were killed. On Thursday, Spanish news media reported that the driver had said the train’s speed had been about 120 miles per hour, more than double the limit in the stretch of track where the train derailed. On the day of the wreck, he took over from another driver just 60 miles before the crash, according to Spanish news reports.

Video footage showed the moment when the train went off the track

The train was almost full, carrying more than 200 passengers and merrymakers returning to the region for a special holiday on Thursday. July 25 is the feast day for St. James the Apostle, the patron saint of Spain, who for centuries has inspired pilgrims to walk El Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St. James. The pilgrimage has had a burst of popularity in recent years, drawing walkers from around the world. After the crash, the city of Santiago de Compostela canceled its extensive celebration and the authorities urged people to donate blood. Thousands made a very different kind of pilgrimage to the site of the disaster, watching as rescuers used cranes and trucks to hoist the engines of the wrecked train. All — children, teenagers and older people — stood in funereal silence.

Nearby, in a building where an information center had been set up, police officers kept the victims’ families from the public eye. Some walked around the building in tears, hugging and comforting one another, while others grew frustrated waiting to see their loved ones. “Now, at 9:30 p.m., is when they allowed us to go and see our family member,” said María, a relative of a victim who did not want her full name used. “Twenty-four hours waiting, in these conditions. That’s too much.” Most high-speed lines that are part of the European rail traffic system are covered by a GPS-based surveillance network that constantly monitors trains’ speed and automatically brakes them at speed limits.

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Spain mourns train crash victims as it hunts for clues
26 July 2013 > Spain is in mourning over the deaths of 78 people in a high-speed train crash on Wednesday.

More than 90 passengers out of 218 on board the train that crashed outside Santiago de Compostela remain in hospital, including some 30 critical. The injured train driver has been detained and faces charges of "recklessness", police say. There are reports that the train was travelling at more than double the speed limit at the time of the crash. Spain has declared three days of national mourning over the crash - one of its worst ever rail disasters.

Recovery work has been continuing at the site of one of Spain's deadliest rail disasters of the last decades.

On Friday, police said 78 people had been confirmed dead - down from 80 announced earlier. They said the difference arose because human remains had been wrongly identified in the initial stages. At least 130 people were taken to hospital after the accident, and 95 are still being treated. The 32 seriously injured include children. People from several nationalities are among the wounded, including five Americans and one Briton. One American was among the dead.

'Too fast'

The Secretary of State for Transport, Rafael Catala, has said in a radio broadcast that early indications suggested the train had been going too fast. The Madrid to Ferrol train's data recording "black box" is now with the judge in charge of the investigation. The driver under investigation, who was slightly injured in the crash and is under guard in hospital, has been named by Spanish media as Francisco Jose Garzon Amo. It is unclear whether anyone else is subject to investigation. The train's carriages have been removed from the track by cranes and sent for analysis.

The president of railway firm Renfe, Julio Gomez Pomar, was quoted by El Mundo newspaper as saying the driver, who was aged 52, had 30 years of experience with the company and had been operating trains on the line for more than a year. He said the train which derailed had no technical problems. But Mr Garzon, who was trapped in the cab after the accident, is quoted as saying moments after the crash that the train had taken the curve at 190 km/h (118mph) despite a speed limit on that section of 80km/h, unidentified investigation sources told Spanish media.

More http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23461585
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waltky · Jul 26, 2013

Spanish police take possession of train's black boxes...

Spanish police detain train driver
Sat, Jul 27, 2013 - Spanish police yesterday detained the driver of a train that crashed in northwestern Spain, lowered the death toll from 80 to 78 and took possession of the “black boxes” of the train expected to shed light on why it was going faster than the speed limit on the curve where it derailed.

And in an interview with the Associated Press, an US passenger injured on the train said he saw on a TV monitor screen inside his car that the train was traveling 194kph seconds before the crash — far above the 80kph speed limit on the curve where it derailed. The driver, Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, was officially detained in the hospital where he was recovering, said Jaime Iglesias, the National Police chief of the Galicia region where the crash happened just on the outskirts of the regional capital, Santiago de Compostela. Iglesias said that Garzon Amo would be questioned “as a suspect for a crime linked to the cause of the accident.” The driver, under guard by police, cannot yet testify because of his medical condition, Iglesias said, adding that he did not have details of the medical condition but that it could delay efforts by police to question him.

The revised death toll from 80 to 78 came as forensic scientists matched body parts with each other at a makeshift morgue set up in a sports arena in Santiago de Compostela, said Antonio de Amo, the police chief in charge of the scientific service for the National Police. De Amo said police were still working to identify what they believe are the remains of six people, and that the count could change as they continue their work associating body parts with each other. Meanwhile, investigators have taken possession of the “black boxes” of the train, court spokeswoman Maria Pardo Rios. The boxes record train’s trip data, including speed and distances and braking and are similar to flight recorders for airplanes. Analysis will be performed on the boxes but she declined comment on how long the analysis will take.

Stephen Ward, 18-year-old Mormon missionary from Utah, said he was writing in his journal when he looked up at the monitor and saw the train’s speed. Then “the train lifted up off the track. It was like a roller coaster,” he said. Seconds later, Ward said, a backpack fell from the rack above him and he felt the train fly off the track. That was his last memory before he blacked out on impact. When Ward woke up, someone was helping him walk out of his train car and crawl out of a ditch where the car had toppled over. He thought he was dreaming for 30 seconds until he felt his blood-drenched face and noticed the scene around him. “Everyone was covered in blood. There was smoke coming up off the train,” he said. “There was a lot of crying, a lot of screaming. There were plenty of dead bodies. It was quite gruesome,” he said.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2013/07/27/2003568300
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Spain train crash investigation turns to driver
July 26, 2013 — Investigations into Spain's deadliest train crash in decades have only begun, but already a key question has been answered: Experts said Friday that the driver, not a computer, was responsible for applying the brakes because no "fail-safe" system has been installed on the dangerous stretch of bending track.

The question of whether the brakes failed — or were never used — in the approach to Santiago de Compostela may remain open until police can question the injured driver and analyze the data on the train's just-recovered "black box." Police announced they had arrested 52-year-old Francisco Jose Garzon Amo on suspicion of reckless driving because the train hit the turn Wednesday traveling far faster than its posted 80 kph (50 mph) limit. The train's eight carriages packed with 218 passengers tumbled off the tracks into a concrete wall, and diesel fuel powering the engine sent flames coursing through some cabins.

As the first funeral ceremonies began Friday night, authorities working from a sports arena-turned-morgue announced they had positively identified 75 of the 78 people killed in the crash. They lowered the death toll from 80 after determining that some severed body parts had wrongly been attributed to different victims. They said five of the dead came from Algeria, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Mexico and the United States. Adif, Spain's railway agency, confirmed that a high-tech automatic braking program called the European Rail Traffic Management System was installed on most of the high-speed track leading from Madrid north to Santiago de Compostela — but the cutting-edge coverage stops just 5 kilometers (3 miles) south of where the crash occurred, placing a greater burden on the driver to take charge.

Adif spokeswoman Maria Carmen Palao said the driver from that point on had sole control of brakes and when to use them. She said even European Rail Traffic Management technology might not have been powerful enough to stop a speeding train in time. "Regardless of the system in place, the drivers know the speed limits. If these are respected, an accident should not take place," she said. "Whatever speed the train was traveling at, the driver knows beforehand what lies ahead. ... There's no sudden change in which a driver finds out by surprise that he has to change speed." Gonzalo Ferre, Adif's president, said the driver should have started slowing the train 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) before the dangerous bend, which comes immediately after the trains exit a tunnel.

He said signs clearly marked this point when the driver must begin to slow "because as soon as he exits the tunnel he needs to be traveling at 80 kilometers per hour." Spain's state-run train company, Renfe, described Amo as an experienced driver who knew the Madrid-Santiago route well. It said he had driven that train about 60 times in the past year. "The knowledge of this line that he had to have is exhaustive," Renfe's president, Julio Gomez-Pomar, said in a TV interview.

- See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/spain-train-crash-investigation-turns-driver#sthash.qk69aJ0h.dpuf
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