Forty years of complacency, loss of rigor, and institutional decay: how much longer are we going to look the other way?
There are news stories that outrage us, others that sadden us, and some that should compel us, once and for all, to ask ourselves uncomfortable questions. The train accident that occurred today in Toledo, with the collision of two high-speed trains, is one of them.
While the facts are being clarified and those affected are being attended to, there is one question we cannot fail to ask: are we doing everything necessary to ensure that the essential infrastructures and services of our society function with the utmost safety guarantees?
I do not intend to substitute for the investigators or to pass judgment before knowing the causes. But I also do not believe that we should limit ourselves to waiting for a technical report, listening to institutional statements, and turning the page until the next tragedy. Because the underlying problem, if we want to address it honestly, is much deeper than a specific accident.
Forty years of silent decay
For decades, we have witnessed, with worrying normality, the progressive deterioration of certain principles that should be non-negotiable: responsibility, competence, rigor, demand, and respect for a job well done.
We have learned to live with mediocrity, to justify mistakes, to turn responsibilities into excuses, and to confuse management with propaganda. Investments are announced, plans are presented, projects are inaugurated, and promises are multiplied. But the fundamental question remains the same: does what is under our responsibility really work?
A society is not sustained solely by budgets, buildings, technology, or speeches. It is sustained by prepared people, effective control systems, constant maintenance, and responsible individuals who understand that their decisions can have irreversible consequences.
When these conditions weaken, the deterioration is not always perceived immediately. Sometimes it advances slowly, hidden behind an appearance of normality, until one day a crack appears that can no longer be concealed. And then we wonder how it could have happened.
The fiction that we are all equal
There is an idea that has taken hold in our society and that, however uncomfortable it may be to question, deserves deep reflection: the confusion between equality of rights and equality of capabilities.
No, we are not all equal in our aptitudes, our intellectual faculties, our capacity for analysis, our discipline, or our ability to solve problems. We have the same dignity as people and should enjoy the same fundamental rights, but that does not mean we all have the same capabilities to perform any task. Pretending otherwise is not progressivism: it is denying an evident reality.
The role of education should not be to conceal these differences, but to offer each person the necessary tools to develop their capabilities to the fullest. At the same time, it must demand that each student acquire the knowledge and competencies corresponding to the level they aim to surpass.
However, when the obsession with generalized promotion takes precedence over learning, when criteria are lowered to avoid failure, and when the degree ends up becoming an administrative procedure, a perversion of the system occurs: one can end up accrediting a preparation that does not correspond to the real knowledge of the recipient of that diploma.
And the consequences are not limited to the classroom. When a society stops distinguishing between passing and knowing, between obtaining a degree and mastering a profession, it runs the risk of placing insufficiently prepared individuals in positions whose demands exceed their capabilities. Not necessarily due to a lack of natural intelligence, but due to deficiencies in training, experience, judgment, or aptitude to assume certain responsibilities.
The problem reaches its maximum severity when these positions involve managing critical infrastructure, making medical decisions, administering justice, or directing institutions on which the safety and well-being of thousands of people depend. A degree should certify demonstrated competence, not serve as an alibi to boast of a preparation that does not exist.
True equality of opportunity consists of allowing everyone to train, progress, and demonstrate what they can do. It does not consist of guaranteeing that everyone obtains the same results, regardless of their knowledge or effort. And it certainly does not consist of pretending that anyone is capable of performing any function.
A responsible society does not humiliate those who need more time to learn, nor does it abandon those who have difficulties. But it also does not deceive anyone by giving them a credential that does not reflect their preparation. It supports, trains, evaluates, and demands. And when someone does not meet the necessary requirements, it must offer them the opportunity to improve, not pretend they are already prepared.
Because misunderstood indulgence in education can turn, years later, into incompetence within institutions. And when incompetence settles into positions of responsibility without adequate controls, the consequences can affect the entire society.
We do not need an education that manufactures brilliant records at the cost of emptying knowledge of its content. We need an education that trains people capable of thinking, understanding, solving problems, and taking responsibility. Equality must ensure that everyone has the opportunity to go as far as their abilities and effort allow them; not to force society to pretend that everyone is prepared to reach the same place.
Competence is not presumed: it is demonstrated. And the greater the responsibility, the greater the demand must be.
The problem does not end with the railways
This reflection also affects medicine, justice, education, public administration, and all the essential pillars of our society.
In medicine, preparation and professional updating can make the difference between recovery and a fatal outcome. In justice, rigor and independence are indispensable to protect citizens' rights. In education, the quality of teaching conditions the opportunities of future generations. In transport and infrastructure, maintenance, protocols, and reaction capacity are matters of public safety.
In all these areas, we need competent professionals, functioning institutions, and responsible individuals willing to be held accountable. It is not enough to hold a position. It is not enough to have a budget. It is not enough to present an impeccable record if reality shows that the system is failing.
And it is not enough to look for an individual culprit when a catastrophe occurs. If the investigation identifies human error, it will be necessary to determine why it happened, what controls existed, if the procedures were followed, and if the system was designed to detect or prevent that error. Because a truly safe system cannot depend on all people always getting it right. It must be capable of preventing failures, detecting them in time, and preventing an error from becoming a tragedy.
Political responsibility cannot disappear
Every time a tragedy occurs, we witness the same ritual: declarations of sorrow, promises of investigation, announcements of measures, and appeals for prudence. All of this may be necessary, but it is not sufficient.
Political responsibility also consists of anticipating problems, ensuring maintenance, investing wisely, evaluating results, and correcting deficiencies before it is too late. If wrong decisions have been made for years, if warnings have been ignored, or if control mechanisms have been weakened, those decisions must be examined and those responsible must answer for them when appropriate.
It is not serious to automatically attribute any accident to forty years of mismanagement. But it would also not be serious to rule out in advance the influence of decisions accumulated over decades. To establish that relationship, evidence, documentation, and an independent investigation are needed. What we can demand from now on is transparency, rigor, and accountability. Without smoke screens. Without propaganda. Without using the pain of the victims as an instrument of political confrontation.
A society cannot afford to live on appearances
True progress does not consist of boasting of modernity, but of ensuring that the essential works. It does not consist of distributing recognition, but of rewarding merit. It does not consist of filling positions, but of ensuring that those who occupy them are prepared to perform them.
We must recover the culture of effort, rigor in education, responsibility in management, and respect for professional competence. We must stop considering any criticism as an attack and start understanding it as an opportunity to correct what does not work. And, above all, we must abandon the idea that there will always be someone who will resolve the consequences of our mistakes.
Because when security systems fail, it's not a report that suffers. When medicine fails, it's not a statistic that awaits a diagnosis. When justice fails, it's not a file that loses its rights. And when a railway system fails, it's not figures that travel on the trains. It's people. It's families. It's lives.
Tragedy should not become a sentence handed down before an investigation, but neither should it become news we will forget tomorrow.
The problem is not who governs, but the system we have built
And we finally get to the heart of the problem. Perhaps we are mistaken in always looking for a culprit in the politician of the moment, in the minister who appears before the cameras, or in the person who incidentally occupies a certain office. It is too easy to point to the last one who arrived and believe that, by replacing him with another, everything will start working again.
But what if the problem were much deeper? What if what is failing were not a specific government, but a system that has been consolidating for forty years, feeding on its own contradictions and surviving thanks to the alternation of parties that, with ideological differences and different responsibilities, have not managed to correct its structural deficiencies?
A system that has allowed, on too many occasions, appearance to prevail over competence, propaganda over results, the short term over planning, and political survival over the general interest. A system in which responsibilities are diluted, errors rarely translate into profound changes, and each new legislature seems to start from scratch, as if nothing that happened before deserved serious review.
That is why I find it hard to believe that the next elections, by themselves, will solve this problem. One party or another will win, names, speeches, and promises will change. There will be new declarations of intent and new hopes placed in those who come to power. But, if the operating rules remain the same, if we do not recover educational standards, selection based on merit and ability, the responsibility of managers, and the obligation to be accountable, we run the risk of continuing down the same path.
It is not about claiming that all political options are identical or that voting is meaningless. It is about understanding that no change of government can replace a profound transformation of institutions, of the criteria with which we select our leaders, and of the culture of demand we expect from those who perform essential functions.
And this is where indignation turns into sadness. Because those who will end up paying the price for our renunciations will not only be us. It will be our children. It will be the generations who will inherit infrastructures, institutions, and an educational system whose state will depend on the decisions we make today. It will be them who will have to navigate a society in which trust in institutions, the value of knowledge, and respect for professional competence should be non-negotiable pillars.
What future are we preparing for them if we stop demanding that things be done well? What hope can we offer them if we teach them that degrees matter more than knowledge, that holding a position matters more than being prepared to exercise it, and that the mistakes of those in charge always end up being diluted in statements and promises?
A society can recover from an economic crisis. It can rebuild infrastructure and repair a damaged institution. What is much more difficult is to rebuild trust when several generations have learned to distrust those who should guarantee the proper functioning of public services.
I don't know which party will win the next election. What I do know is that, if we continue to confuse a change of faces with a change of system, in a few years we will be asking the same questions, lamenting new failures, and once again looking for those responsible when the damage has already been done.
And that is, perhaps, the saddest conclusion of all: that it is not enough to change those who govern if we are not capable of changing what allows the same mistakes to be repeated. Because we are not only talking about politics, education, or trains. We are talking about the kind of society we want to leave to our children. And if we are not capable of recovering the demand, responsibility, merit, and respect for a job well done, we will have to accept that a part of the responsibility for that future that worries us so much will also be ours.
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