Overview
- The investigating judge in Santander made the order public Tuesday and formally named engineer Manuel Méndez Baliela as an investigated person in the case.
- The decision rests on emails and technical files sent by the project’s supervising director, José Antonio Osorio, indicating Fronda designed, built, and installed the wooden spans and that its engineer signed the final calculations.
- Those records show the Dragados site manager warned that the original plan used safety factors far below accepted levels, and Fronda then produced new structural calculations for an ad hoc fix during construction.
- The supervising director remains under investigation for accepting that fix during the works, while the judge says the Dragados manager acted properly and the authors of the overall coastal-path plan are not implicated.
- The court set next steps, with expert testimony due May 15 and further hearings on June 5, followed by statements as suspects by the Fronda engineer and the supervising director in the probe of the March 3 collapse that killed six and seriously injured one.