Seventeen injured, a tourist train overturned, and a tapas festival in ruins. The incident at Cártama is an alarming spectacle, but one that invites a deeper, more uncomfortable reflection. We have become a society that celebrates hedonism over infrastructure, that prioritises the fleeting pleasure of a food festival over the solidity of our transport systems.
The Victorian engineers who built our railways would weep at such negligence. They understood that a railway is a covenant between man and machine, a promise of safe passage. We have broken that covenant, trading it for cheap thrills and paella.
The real derailment here is not of the train, but of our collective priorities. We have become a people addicted to spectacle, ignoring the quiet decay beneath our feet. This is the Fall of Rome, but with tapas and selfies.
