An old Spanish refrain advises el martes, ni te cases ni te embarques — don’t get married or start a journey on a Tuesday.
Daniel Avecilla may now be wary of setting off on a Monday, too. On a Monday last month, April 28, he was stuck on a train for ten hours, one of tens of millions of people affected by a catastrophic power cut that paralysed Spain and Portugal.
Exactly a week later, the young man from Cadiz was among thousands of passengers stranded on a railway platform after thieves stole copper cables from the Seville to Madrid high-speed line. Avecilla scoffed at the government’s claim that it had been “a serious act of sabotage”, saying: “Well, put more security on the track.”
Passengers were stranded when an electric high-speed train was halted by the major electricity blackout
JAVIER SORIANO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Spain’s infrastructure woes and the Socialist-led government’s ability to deal with them are now in the…
