“The tractor driver tried to react, but he couldn’t, I saw him gesturing with his hands. He packed up as if he had been at a standstill and the luck of the musicians was that they were not playing and began to run and get out on the sides of the street where they could. It was frightening”. Manuel García, 73, a resident of Marchena (Seville), has had the scene of terror stuck in his mind since last Epiphany night the last float of the procession ran over the group of people who were on the opposite sidewalk and caused one dead and 12 injured.
García was with his wife, Josefi Burgos, 67, and they both watched in panic as the tractor that was pulling the float with about twenty people on top of it began to descend uncontrollably the slope before Plaza de San Andrés in disbelief. and fleeing in fear from the public. “As soon as I was safe, I went looking for my grandchildren,” Burgos says. The main hypothesis of the Civil Guard is a failure of the tractor’s brakes, which after going down the slope tried to avoid the public and was crossed, amid the screams of the neighbors.
A 72-year-old woman was killed instantly, struck by the tractor, and two children, one aged two and the other between the ages of eight and ten, were seriously injured, as well as one adult. Nine other people were slightly injured. The events occurred in a place where this Kings Day morning silence reigns. The neighbors remember the seconds of fright experienced last night. “A father and his son, who play the bass drum in the music band and were behind, he caught them here. They were bruised and the ambulances took them away, but not everything that could have happened with as many people as there were,” recalls Francisco Ternero, 57, who lives two streets from the scene of the accident and points out the trace of the accident.
The mayoress of Marchena, María del Mar Romero (PSOE), raised this Friday the question of whether it is necessary to do without tractors to pull the floats and thus avoid more accidents. 10 years ago, another parade caused the death of a six-year-old boy in Malaga who ran to look for candy without his parents’ control. “Zero risk does not exist, but in the future we must reconsider the format of the Marchena parade, see if the ideal is with agricultural vehicles,” said Romero, who did not go into details about possible alternatives.
Of the more than 8,000 towns in Spain, many —especially the smaller ones— do not have adequate safety devices and horseback riding has great latent dangers: many children who move quickly and very close to the tractors and carriages, with their huge wheels. While gifts and candies fly through the air and fall to the ground, many parents look at the Kings and children are left in the risky background.
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At a press conference, accompanied by 13 councilors with tears in their eyes and shocked faces, Romero read with great difficulty due to emotion: “We are extremely sorry for what happened, we are extremely sorry (…). I must transfer the deep state of shock and anxiety of the people who embodied the Kings and their teams, especially Baltasar [que iba sobre la carroza]. The driver and his family are emotionally devastated, ”he said with a broken voice. As soon as she finished, the councilor received a long consoling hug from her Security Councilor, Manuel Suárez, in front of the cameras.
The chief sub-inspector of the Local Police, Miguel Checa, defended that the security operation worked as planned and that this street was not particularly troublesome in the five kilometers of the procession: “This was one of the widest points , perfectly controlled, without risk and with a little inclination, but almost all the streets of the town have inclination”.
Very close to the Plaza de San Andrés was the mayor Manuel Suárez last night, who rushed to comfort the relatives, many of whom were shocked, but could not help but catch the tragedy. “He gave me an anxiety attack, like the mayoress”, he recounted, still very affected. The security device had a third of the 35 local police officers, between two and four security assistants per float and a minimum of two volunteers. The sub-delegate of the Government in Seville, Carlos Toscano, has pointed out in Canal Sur to “a mechanical failure of the tractor”, although the investigation is in the preliminary phase.
The driver, in his 70s, passed a breathalyzer test prior to the ride, like the rest of the tractor drivers. Then, he repeated the alcohol one along with another drug one. All gave negative results. In addition, it was verified that all the vehicles complied with the obligatory insurance and the technical inspection (ITV).
After the incident, the Marchena City Council has decreed four days of official mourning, until next January 9. “Christmas ended yesterday at 8:15 p.m., like the music and the lights,” summed up the mayor, who asked her neighbors instead of sharing the videos of the accident on social networks to send them to the agents in charge of the investigation to clarify the event. The tractor is now in custody so that investigators from the armed institute can analyze it in the coming days.
In the Plaza de San Andrés, next to four orange trees and a monument to the victims of the 1936 military coup and the Franco regime, the Stop sign stood out., very unpainted with a white that eats red, and that the tractor could not respect.
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