Óscar Puente has resigned and Vida Nueva has paraded him in procession. The Minister of Transport announced his departure on Tuesday in the Permanent Deputation of Congress, following the railway accidents in Adamuz in January and in Urda on 28 October: 115 dead between the two. The magazine headlined the next day with the fall of the “left-wing politician who goes to Mass,” and the headline already assigns the roles. It decides who rides on the float.
The chronicle is arranged, in a way, like a procession. The banner leads the way: the minister’s words about his decision, “a matter of political dignity, coherence and empathy with the victims,” hung without altering a comma; the authorities follow, with Sánchez’s thanks on X; the reproaches of the PP and Vox fit into one sentence each (those on the opposite pavement are seen in profile), and at the end comes the float, which is what the people have come to see.
The float is from 2020.
Almost two thirds of the hagiography reproduce the interview that the publication’s director, José Beltrán, conducted with the then mayor of Valladolid for an issue on the laity, published on 5 January that year. There the magazine presented him as a politician who knows himself to be “Catholic and socialist. Or vice versa, without the order altering the product.” The formula comes from the multiplication table, and in the multiplication table it works.
Outside it, the product is known: the Council of Ministers of which Puente was a member agreed on 14 October 2025 to promote the reform of article 43 of the Constitution to entrench abortion, and on 7 April 2026 approved the final bill. The order, indeed, did not alter the product.
In the same conversation, Puente maintained that “parties whose social content is close to the Gospel cannot be condemned because they do not share positions on euthanasia or abortion.” Vida Nueva reproduces it almost seven years later without a line of contrast, and not for lack of bibliography.
Evangelium vitae, in its number 73, does not allow campaigning for a law that admits abortion or euthanasia or voting for it. The Doctrinal Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of 2002, in number 4, rules out that a well-formed Christian conscience may favour with its vote a programme contrary to the fundamental contents of faith and morals. And Benedict XVI devoted number 83 of Sacramentum caritatis, the one on eucharistic coherence, to those who decide from public office on human life. The minister, according to what he himself recounted, takes part in the Eucharist.
The magazine stopped at 82.
There is something else, more recent. The chronicle records that Puente made the decision “in the first minutes after the tragedy.” On 28 October, in Urda, he said he was not thinking of himself; on the 30th he ruled out resigning with this formula, “my way of assuming responsibilities is to face up to them,” and that same Friday he told journalists, in a huddle, that he had offered the post to Sánchez and that Sánchez had rejected it. The decision of the first minutes required six days, a refusal from Moncloa and a press conference to the contrary. Vida Nueva sees no contradiction there. It sees coherence, which is the word the minister chose and which the magazine copies in neat handwriting.
To top it all, the detail of the list. Puente will continue to appear as number one on the socialist ticket for Valladolid on 29 November, and the chronicle presents it as a fatality: candidacies published in the BOE, it says, cannot be modified. That is not accurate. Article 48.1 of the LOREG allows a candidacy to be changed by the candidate’s resignation during the period for corrections, before proclamation, which was on 2 November; Puente announced his two resignations on the 3rd. Either the decision was not made in the first minutes, or it was taken by letting the deadline run so as to leave the list. The magazine does not choose (in a procession no questions are asked).
The canopy is missing, and the chronicle finds it in the archdiocese. In 2020 Puente spoke of “almost an affectionate friendship” with Luis Argüello, then auxiliary bishop of Valladolid and secretary general of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, today its president. The magazine rescues the phrase and leaves unasked the question that fell of its own weight: what does the president of the bishops think of his almost affectionate friend, of the Council of Ministers in which he sat, of article 43… Vida Nueva does not report. It Puentifies.
The piece signs off with a 2022 photograph: the then mayor presents Ricardo Blázquez with the title of Favourite Son of Valladolid. It is the exact ending. Vida Nueva has returned the courtesy. The minister of Adamuz and Urda ends the procession as favourite son.
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