And now that the WSJ dared to "print" such an article, all the press in Spain is quoting them adding their own little "twists" to the story to make it fit better a "mechanical" (electrical) malfunction and downplay the pilots (potentially) forgetting to set wing configuration correctly for take-off.
So it's now "An electrical malfunction caused the accident".
I have the gut feeling that a lot of what's been said in the press lately originates here, distorted to their own agendas, and not the other way around ...
Many even point to stuff like "according to the WSJ, the ailerons didn't deploy because of an electrical malfunction..."
How horribly can the "truth" be distorted? (And in this case, it's not even the truth ... it's just some potential truth given by the WSJ article).
Of course, accidents like this, where there is not a single major cause such as a big explosion, must usually have more than "one cause".
If the scenario is "bad wing configuration by the pilots", usually there is another minor cause(s) on why they didn't notice on time or why they weren't able to recover on time. This secondary minor cause can be anything in this case. From a blown warning horn (unlikely), to having the alarms disconnected on purpose by the crew, to having them inavertedly disconnected by maintenance technicians, to having any other malfunction on the plane that made them not go-off (ground sensors, front geat maintenance, etc).
But that's, obviously, something nobody should rely on. Anything electrical can break at any time. 99% of the cause of an accident like that (and I'm not saying the Spanair one was, this is just theoretical) would be the failure of both pilots to check and double check, as they are required to do, the main two or three configuration parameters vitals to achieving take-off.
As many have pointed out here, until humans are removed from that process, these kind of accidents WILL CONTINUE TO HAPPEN. Because no matter how many alarms, etc, one designs, they can always be bypassed (disconnected or even ignored) by the human part of the equation. They can also malfunction and the malfunction be ignored, MEL, or just not noticed. Also, they could happen to fail exactly at the time they were needed (nothing sensible can be done in that case).
And as someone mentioned before, we have all gone through situations where we could've sworn over our dead bodies that we did something we simply forgot to do.
It's "nobody's fault". It happens to everyone. Obviously nobody is going to blame you for forgetting to flip a switch once in 20 years. But hopefully, you are not working on a nuclear plant and your mistake can be corrected on time if everybody else is alert.
We can make extremely redundant warning systems that will make these accidents unlikely. But once, every say 30 years, someone will find a way to (not fully aware, of course) try to complete a take-off with the wrong wing configuration one way or another ... Think Chernobyl.