POLICE in northern Spain have come under fire after it emerged that a local resident filed a complaint about the poor condition of a coastal footbridge less than 24 hours before it collapsed.
Six people were killed on Tuesday afternoon when a wooden walkway running along a rocky cliff face near Santander suddenly gave way.
In total, seven students from La Granja vocational training centre were walking across the bridge, located near the coastal area of El Bocal, when it collapsed, sending the group plummeting onto jagged rocks below.
One of the victims was successfully rescued shortly after the accident but the others were later found dead.
The mayor of Santander has since admitted that the tragedy could have been avoided after it was revealed that local police ignored a warning lodged the day before.
A resident who lives nearby made an emergency 112 call to police just after midday on Monday.
READ MORE: At least four dead and two missing after wooden bridge collapses over rocky cliffs in northern Spain
But the local police officer who received the call did not flag it as a serious risk and therefore nothing was done to examine the condition of the bridge.
“It is unacceptable for [an officer] to be distracted, even if they do not understand that it is so urgent,” said Gema Igual, the Partido Popular (PP) mayor.
“A local police officer or anyone from Santander knows that if you fall on the rocks there, you are in great danger. That lack of perception of urgency was not correct, and I refer to the facts.
“I cannot say that the accident was caused by a local police officer not doing his job, but we could have prevented it if, when that call came in, they had done what had been done on other occasions.”
The mayor gave the example of a call from a neighbour in 2024 about the partial collapse of La Maruca bridge, which was then closed off to pedestrians by officers.
However, she attempted to pass on the buck for maintenance of the bridge, telling reporters that responsibility falls on the shoulders of the environmental ministry rather than the city council.
In response, the government department said her claim ‘does not correspond to reality’, but that they did not want to say more to avoid ‘contributing to fuelling controversy or generating more noise’. “There will be an opportunity to clarify each of [her claims] when appropriate and with all the necessary information on the table,” a source from within the department told El Pais newspaper on Friday.
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