The Renfe handover follows the 28 October crash at Urda in Toledo and a drivers’ strike on 10 November. On 13 November, the Council of Ministers, under First Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Carlos Cuerpo, appointed Inmaculada Gutiérrez to replace Álvaro Fernández Heredia and named Joaquim Hortalà to lead Adif. Hortalà filled the post after Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña resigned.
News reports said the collision near Urda killed 69 people. It followed a January accident near Adamuz that reportedly killed 46 and a separate derailment in Catalonia in which a train driver died. The incidents renewed scrutiny of rail safety.
Renfe drivers began a nationwide 24-hour strike on 10 November over safety commitments that the union said had not been implemented. The union had announced further stoppages for 12 and 17 November, citing the Urda crash and earlier accidents. Transport Minister Carlos Cuerpo met union representatives twice in less than a week, but the strike went ahead.
Gutiérrez takes the presidency after serving as director general of Renfe Proyectos Internacional. Her work there covered international business development, including railway projects such as the Haramain high-speed railway in Saudi Arabia and Renfe’s participation in the Czech operator Leo Express. Before joining Renfe, she served on Spain’s Tribunal de Defensa de la Competencia and the Comisión Nacional de la Competencia, and worked as Spain’s economic and commercial counsellor in the United States.
Gutiérrez’s competition-policy experience is relevant to Renfe’s position in the passenger market, where it competes with other operators on some intercity and high-speed routes. She has held management roles in Spain’s public administration and in public and private companies. She is an economics and business graduate of the Complutense University of Madrid and belongs to the Senior Corps of State Commercial Technicians and Economists.
Hortalà takes over the post left vacant by Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña, who resigned. Before becoming Adif president, Hortalà was Renfe’s secretary general and legal executive. His career has included legal and supervisory roles at Spain’s competition authorities, including the Comisión Nacional de la Competencia and its successor, the CNMC.
Hortalà began his public-sector career in 2004 in the State Solicitors’ Office in Barcelona, where he worked until 2010. He then served as a State solicitor at the Ministry of Development from 2010 to 2011. In 2013 he became secretary to the board of the Comisión Nacional de la Competencia; after the CNMC was established that October, he became director of its legal advisory service.
Hortalà returned as secretary to the CNMC board in 2017 and held the post until 2021. He was legal director of the Fondo de Reestructuración Ordenada Bancaria from 2022 to 2024, then became secretary general of Renfe Operadora and the boards of its subsidiaries in April 2024. He remained in that position until July 2026.
A separate report on Telecinco footage concerning Sánchez’s 2017 campaign driver and Víctor de Aldama is available in an earlier report.
