Puente admits that Blanco’s departure is due to opening a new stage for Renfe with a “more user-centered” management

The resignation known this Monday of still president of Renfe, Raül Blancois not simply due to “personal reasons” and the search for new professional projects, but to his “wear” after two years at the head of the company and conversations which he had had with the Minister of Transport for two or three months, Oscar Puentewhich has defended its departure as an attempt to give a new stage to the railway operator, with “a more user-centered management.”

Puente explained in an interview in The Night 24 hours in more detail the reasons for Blanco’s resignation as president of Renfe, which will take effect on January 14 and which They don’t just have to do with “personal reasons” which, as often happens, had been used again in this case. “Personal reasons play a role, it has been two years at the head of a company like Renfe with significant wear and tear,” indicated the minister. “We were considering opening a new stage, he had other professional offers and we reached an agreement to close the stage“, he added, about an “agreed” exit.

Puente has highlighted the work of Blanco, who “he has done a good job”, at a time when Renfe “has grown a lot in passengers and the figures have improved in difficult times after the entry of competitors in the most profitable part, high speed,” he said about Ouigo and Iryo.

However, now search “a different profile” to preside over Renfe, a position that everything indicates will be held by its current Secretary General of Sustainable Mobility, Alvaro Fernandez Herediaformer councilor of Más Madrid in the capital and also former manager of its Municipal Transport Company (EMT) and its version in Valladolid, the Valladolid Urban Bus company (AUVASA), while Puente was mayor.

“We have to go to a stage more user-centric and think about traveler management“, he added less than a week after 2025 began with a new day of incidents on Renfe trains, due to a computer failure in the Avril trainswhich Puente has emphasized “was Talgonot from Renfe” and that it was related to the error in its software related to the year 2024 being a leap year. “The explanation that was given to us is that last year had been a leap year and the software was configured with a delay of one day.”

Despite the start of the year and the complicated 2024 in terms of incidents and breakdowns of all kindsrelated to railway infrastructure, trains or station capacity, Puente maintains that incident figures “have been improving a lot” especially in the last three months of last year, thanks also, he said, to the appointments of new directors of Travelers and Cercanías. “Incidence figures are improving,” he stated.