The Root of all Evil

It is a long and honoured tradition for the Catholic faithful to make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in celebration of honouring St.James, a disciple of Jesus, whose bodily relics are said to rest within the shrine. Some go by rail, and a far smaller number make the actual pilgrimage on foot, setting out from any place on the journey to plot their strategy, staying over at hostels along the way, meeting and speaking with other pilgrims from around the world.





It is an ambitious journey, people have to be devoted to the idea of setting out and nursing sore feet, travelling by foot on terrain known to have hosted thousands and thousands before them; a historical journey of soulful proportions to satisfy the faith that resides in people who find in the personal solitude of the enterprise a larger meaning in their lives, traversing el Camino de Santiago. To reach the magnificent cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

This is a tradition dating from the medieval era, and it has a treasured place in Spain's heritage. Now Santiago de Compostela will be associated with the catastrophe of a train derailment that has taken almost 80 lives of men, women and children. Far more people were injured, some critically. Video images of the train travelling at unauthorized and deadly speed show graphically what happened; at twice the speed it should have been travelling, it wouldn't have been possible to round the curved stretch of track it approached.

Investigators swiftly ruled out the possibility that this resulted from a terrorist attack. Spain did experience one such al-Qaeda bombing in Madrid in 2004, leading Spain to pull its military out of the NATO and U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan to rout the Afghan Taliban. The current prime minister of Spain visited the crash site, deeply moved, as a native of Santiago de Compostela. 

The national train company RENFE, confirmed that 218 passengers and five crew members were on board the train and Spanish officials stated that the speed limit on that section of track is 80 kilometres per hour. It has been estimated that the train was travelling roughly between 156 to 182 km/h when it derailed. "I saw the train coming out of the bend at great speed and then there was a big noise. Then everybody tried to get out of the train", said one eyewitness.

"The train was burning, people were screaming, 'get me out of here', and we were pulling them out through the windows, using metal panels from the train as stretchers. There were old people, young people, little children being carried out. It was hell", said Isidoro Castano, a Santiago resident who was galvanized into action to aid those trapped in the train.

Ricardo Montero, a passenger, informed a radio station that "when the train reached that bend it began to flip over, many times with some carriages ending up on top of others, leaving many people trapped below. We had to get under the carriages to get out." And police, speaking to the same station said that immediately after the crash the driver called the operator:

"It derailed. What am I going to do, what am I going to do? We are all humans -- we're humans. I hope there are no fatalities because it will all be on my conscience."

There were two drivers aboard the train, both of whom survived, claim some authorities. Galician court officials, however, said the train had one driver only, and he had survived and was expected to give police a statement. That driver has now refused to issue a statement. It seems he will be charged with criminal behaviour. On his Facebook page he appears to have exulted over admitting that he occasionally lapsed into speeding.

And he theorized how fascinating it would be to outrun with his train a police car chasing alongside the tracks. And what a whopping fine the train company would have to pay. Some peoples' idea of humour. The train company had said the driver had thirty years of experience. Perhaps he was motivated by boredom. Familiarity breeds contempt, after all. And the run was so predictable.

He set out to make is less predictable. And in the doing of it created a disaster. Who needs jihadist enemies intent on causing yet another atrocity to be concerned about, when one has citizens of the country with responsible occupations willing to inject a little excitement into the banal, pedestrian expectations of everyday life, and managing to wrest himself out of his state of ennui by imperilling the lives of hundreds of people?

AP Photo    This combo image taken from security camera video shows clockwise from top left a train 

derailing in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, on Wednesday July 24, 2013. Spanish investigators tried 

to determine Thursday why a passenger train jumped the tracks and sent eight cars crashing into each 

 other just before arriving in this northwestern shrine city on the eve of a major Christian religious 

festival, killing at least 77 people and injuring more than 140.

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard