Buenos Aires sues the Madrid Metro for selling wagons with asbestos

Buenos Aires filed a lawsuit against Metro de Madrid yesterday, accusing it of having sold subway cars contaminated with asbestos.

The 84-page lawsuit, which EL MUNDO had access to, argues that Metro de Madrid "should never have sold" the cars to the Buenos Aires Underground company.

The sale came in 2011, when the current Argentine president, Mauricio Macri, was mayor of Buenos Aires and Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón was in charge of Madrid.

The Argentine capital acquired six second-hand trains, the CAF 5000 manufactured in the 70s, when asbestos was not prohibited . Metro de Madrid had already removed them from traffic, but trains began to travel through the bowels of Buenos Aires with its dangerous content.

Last February 2018, it was discovered that there were asbestos on Spanish trains. The cars had been destined for the B line of the Buenos Aires metro, one of the most used, with 240,000 passengers per day . The 763 people who worked at the workshops, stations and trains were also potentially affected.

Affected workers

"We understand that the demand in Madrid is going to prosper because the purchase of the CAF 5000 was made in good faith," a senior official from the City Hall of Buenos Aires who asked not to be identified told EL MUNDO. "The Madrid Metro should never have offered these trains knowing that the laws of both countries prohibited it."

The metro network of Buenos Aires is older than that of Madrid, because its first trains began to run in 1913. Although at a slow pace, in the last decade it was modernized and expanded, with the opening of new stations and the incorporation of cars with air conditioning, which until a few years ago did not exist in the network.

Eduardo De Montmollin, president of Subterráneos de Buenos Aires (Sbase), admitted in an interview with CNN that the plans of the wagons acquired from Spain mentioned the presence of asbestos in the trains. "But there was no way to affirm or validate whether this was indeed true or not. I cannot guarantee that each and every page of the technical manuals has been read. We bought assuming they were in condition, that the Madrid Metro I could sell those trains because in fact in the European Union there is a law that prohibits from 2001 the commercialization of equipment with this substance ".

Sources of the Executive of Buenos Aires specified and extended the phrases of the president of Sbase: "The argument that some pieces appeared in the manuals is fallacious, because the manuals were already 30 years old and it is assumed that they are sold to you in compliance with the law".

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