Spain rail crash near Toledo kills 74, earlier signalling warnings emerge

The collision

A Renfe AVE high-speed train collided with an Iryo train that had stopped on the same line near Ourda, in Toledo province, at 08:53 on Wednesday, 28 October. The AVE had left Madrid's Atocha station bound for Seville. Several carriages derailed, and some came to rest on an embankment, which slowed rescue crews. Reports differ on how the two trains met: one describes a head-on collision, while another says the AVE struck the rear of the halted Iryo train.

Toll and missing people

The death toll was reported at 69 on Thursday, 29 October, and then at 74 in later provisional figures the same day. About 200 people were injured, and dozens remained in hospital. iefimerida reported around 60 people still missing, with families waiting for news. One of them, a 54-year-old Seville resident who was on one of the two trains, has not been found, and his family had received no clear information about his fate.

Warnings and the driver's attempts

According to EL PAÍS, the female driver of Iryo train 6076 tried twice to reset the LZB safety system, each attempt lasting three to four minutes and about eight minutes in total, while the Renfe train approached from 25 kilometres away. After the second failed attempt she phoned her company to report the problem and asked its maintenance department for help. She also told the Adif Traffic Regulation Centre twice that her train remained stopped at the entry signal to Ourda station. The speed of the AVE was not yet known, although Transport Minister Óscar Puente said on Wednesday that the line allows up to 200 km/h.

On 5 October, Iryo chief executive Fabrizio Favara told a committee of the Spanish Senate that LZB disconnections immobilise trains and delay their restart, according to El Mundo. He described the system as safe but old, and said LZB-related incidents were the most frequent on the corridor, apart from exceptional events such as fires.

Political fallout

Transport Minister Óscar Puente directed the investigation on Wednesday, 28 October, toward the official in charge of Adif's control centre at Atocha at the time, and downplayed the earlier LZB failure. He said faults in IT systems are routine and that the systems do not issue erroneous orders. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo accused Puente of trying to shift responsibility onto a station operator and called the stance frivolity. The CC OO union demanded the minister's immediate removal, saying he was blaming workers before the investigation into the causes was complete. Puente is expected to ask to appear before the Permanent Delegation of the Spanish Parliament, and he has scheduled a press conference for the morning of Friday, 30 October.

Victims and reactions

Former labour minister Fátima Báñez, 59, was among the dead, and her death was confirmed on Thursday. She had served in the Labour and Social Security ministry from December 2011 to June 2018 under Mariano Rajoy, and she had chaired the CEOE Foundation since July 2020. She was travelling to Seville for a business event. King Felipe said the country faced another very hard blow and that the investigation must establish how and why the disaster happened. He and Queen Letizia visited injured people at the University Hospital of Toledo. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez went to Ourda for an emergency coordination meeting and pledged stronger safety measures to prevent a repeat.

Maria Karystianou, president of Elpida for Democracy, used a video posted on Thursday, 29 October, to refer to the Tempi train collision in Greece, where her daughter died. She argued that such tragedies stem not only from human error but also from gaps in safety systems. She said:

“Just as in Tempi, and everywhere else, the demand for real, criminal and political accountability is non-negotiable.”

The European Commission said it stood ready to help the Spanish authorities but that it was far too early to draw conclusions about the causes.