Marcos Llorente defends his comments after Spain rail disaster

“Looking away does not pay tribute to them”: Marcos Llorente spoke again on Instagram on Thursday evening after a fatal train collision near Toledo, Spain, on Wednesday. The player responded to those accusing him of politicising the tragedy, having sharply criticised Spain’s transport minister.

While Spanish sport had quickly shown unity and paid tribute to the victims, Llorente had also expressed his indignation. In an Instagram story on Wednesday, he addressed the minister: “Dear Óscar Puente, isn’t it time to put Twitter aside and focus on the work we pay you to do?” He also accused him of a lack of responsibility, seriousness, safety and respect, adding that the minister would blame someone else. Llorente summed up his view of the accident with the words: “What happened is not normal.”

His latest post focused on the criticism prompted by those remarks. “ ‘Politicising’? Are we so obsessed with politics that it has become impossible to demand accountability without immediately being labelled as belonging to one side or the other?” he wrote on Thursday evening. Llorente also condemned partisan disputes and what he described as people defending the indefensible for the sake of their political camp. He argued that political debate was taking precedence over attention to the facts.

The provisional toll reported late on Thursday stood at 69 dead and 108 injured. The collision between two high-speed trains happened on Wednesday morning in Urge, near Toledo, south of Madrid. The disaster had reignited debate in Spain about railway network maintenance and passenger safety.

Llorente ended his message by denouncing the clash between left and right while victims and their families bear the consequences. “How exhausting, this Spain,” he wrote. After tributes from the sporting world, his comments once again put his demand for accountability in focus, along with his rejection of the tragedy being reduced to a political dispute.