Pride in Spain’s rail network turns to soul-searching after another deadly collision

Spain’s high-speed rail network, the most extensive in Europe and the second largest in the world after China, has long ranked as a point of pride in the country. But Wednesday’s deadly crash near Los Yébenes, Toledo – the second major one in nine months – has recast the spotlight on questions about safety in the system.

Officials said at least 68 people were killed on Wednesday morning after two trains collided, leading to the derailment of several carriages. The two trains were carrying 544 passengers at the time.

One train, run by the state-owned Renfe company, ran into the rear of another owned by private company Iryo that had stopped, knocking two of its carriages off the track in a rural area between two villages.

Spain’s transport minister, Oscar Puente, said the incident was caused by what he called an “inexplicable” order from a central command centre for Spain’s trains after a security system had failed.

Puente said that at 8.30am, the security system on a stretch of 60km of track stopped working due to a computer malfunction, causing all trains on that stretch to stop.

But the central command told the Renfe train to start running again, without any speed restrictions, and it ended up colliding with the stopped Iryo train at 8.53am.

Renfe said in a statement that its train had been instructed to continue on its way and had crashed into ​the stationary Iryo train “for reasons we don’t know”.

[ ‘Extremely strange’: Experts baffled by deadly high-speed train crash in SpainOpens in new window ]

The crash follows another in January that killed 46 people and left dozens more injured near the town of Adamuz in Andalucía.

Media on Wednesday were swift to point to the parallels between the two crashes: both involved the same train operators and took place on the line connecting Madrid to the southern region of Andalucía, which is the oldest on Spain’s high-speed network.

The first crash sparked a wider conversation over safety on the line, a debate that rail unions say has continued.

Wednesday’s disaster came a day before a planned 24-hour work stoppage at Renfe by Spain’s largest train drivers’ union. “Our goal is to change the system and make it safer,” the union said earlier this month.

Their reasons for taking action ranged from what they termed the need for climate emergency protocols to ensuring channels of communication for workers to convey concerns. The union also called for guarantees that trains would be “reliable and safe”, adding: “We demand real and definitive technical solutions to the safety and reliability issues that have long plagued our rolling stock.”

It has also called a rolling, six-day strike for drivers at the high-speed rail operator Ouigo.

The January crash sparked a bout of political finger-pointing over whether Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist party government had spent enough on railway maintenance in a country where travel by train accounts for about 57 per cent of all transport.

[ Four incidents, 45 deaths and strikes over safety concerns: A week of crisis on Spanish railsOpens in new window ]

Train travel grew by 40 per cent from 2019 to 2024, coinciding with a period in which the country opened up its rail network to private companies. In the first half of this year, 25 million passengers used high-speed trains in Spain.

The government says it has increased spending on railway network maintenance by 54 per cent since taking power in 2018.

[ Two go on trial over Spanish rail crash that killed 80 peopleOpens in new window ]

Spain spends more than any other country on its high-speed network, averaging about €1.5 billion a year from 2018 to 2022, according to a Reuters analysis of EU data. More than 90 per cent of Spain’s train network is equipped with the highest level of safety control systems in the EU.

Much of the funding, however, has seemingly been directed at new infrastructure, with about 16 per cent earmarked for maintenance, renewal and upgrades. - Guardian