At least 68 people dead in Spain's second major train crash this year

URDA: At least 68 people died when two Spanish high-speed trains collided on Wednesday, with rescuers scouring the wreckage for more bodies after Spain’s second fatal rail crash this year and Europe’s deadliest since 2013.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a televised address from near the accident site south of Madrid that “all of Spain” was in mourning, while the opposition People’s Party said it had cancelled all campaign events for the day ahead of an election next month.

Sanchez said the “terrible tragedy” would be investigated and vowed to address any failures that came to light, adding that the causes of the two crashes appeared to be unrelated.

“If we need to further strengthen safety in order to rebuild confidence in our high-speed rail system, we will do so, because what is unacceptable for a country like Spain is to suffer two high-speed rail accidents in the same year,” Sanchez said.

Red signal

Spain’s transport minister said the crash happened after a Renfe train was authorised to continue its journey despite an active red signal due to a stationary train ahead.

Oscar Puente told reporters in Madrid that the red signal was issued due to a computer communications failure, which automatically stopped traffic, and an erroneous decision had been made to restart the Renfe train.

At the scene, ambulances, funeral home vans and helicopters had parked next to one of the trains on an elevated track section, while twisted metal and wreckage were strewn across an embankment down which at least three carriages had plunged.

The head of Castilla-La Mancha’s regional government said the death toll had risen to 68, while rescue workers were still going carriage by carriage looking for other crash victims.

Passengers, some splattered with blood or bandaged, were evacuated along a nearby road in the aftermath of the accident, which Spain’s health minister Monica Garcia said on social media had injured 80 people, 15 of them very seriously.

Salvador Arriza described the chaos in his carriage.

“I was very close to the door, but (other passengers) were breaking the windows to be able to get out. Some people practically couldn’t move because they were trapped amongst the seats,” said the 62-year-old.

Investigation under way

The accident, the deadliest in Europe since a 2013 crash in Spain’s Santiago de Compostela in which 80 people died, follows another in January between high-speed trains belonging to the same operators and on the same line that killed 46 people.

In that crash, a train derailed and smashed into an oncoming train near Adamuz, in Cordoba province, prompting a debate about the level of investment in railway maintenance.

Renfe said in a statement on Wednesday that after being authorised to continue its journey, its train had crashed into the Iryo train that had remained stationary “for reasons we don’t know”.

“The Renfe train continued on its way as instructed, and a collision occurred. The exact sequence of events, the traffic conditions and the circumstances of the impact will have to be established by the investigation,” Renfe said.

Iryo and Adif did not respond to requests for comment.

Passengers sent flying

A Castilla-La Mancha regional spokesperson said 147 people were on board the Iryo train and 397 on the Renfe service, which crashed at around 9 a.m., causing two Iryo carriages to derail.

Passenger Rafael Barcelo said he felt lucky as he had stepped away from his seat for a coffee, adding there had been at least eight victims from his carriage.

“We were having breakfast, drinking a coffee when we felt a very strong impact and we were sent flying,” he said.

Renfe said it had activated a special line for families of victims and expressed its condolences. Iryo said it had activated emergency protocols.

At a school in Urda where relatives of those missing were being sent, a woman who gave her name as Ana fought back tears as she said there was no news of her husband Pepe and his name was not on the list of those identified, but police had found their dog, Trece.

Maintenance spending

The causes of the January accident are still under investigation. A preliminary report by Spain’s Civil Guard in February pointed to defects in the track, rail or weld between two sections of track as the main hypothesis for the accident, but kept seven other theories open.

Some 25 million passengers used a high-speed train in Spain in the first half of the year, a decline of roughly 14% compared with the same period last year, according to a Reuters analysis of data from Spain’s competition authority.

Meanwhile, accidents, including derailments and collisions, increased from 45 in 2016 to 57 in 2024 and 69 last year, according to Spain’s railway safety authority.

European Commission data shows Spain’s maintenance investment in its roughly 4,000 km (2,485 miles) of high-speed lines has lagged other large European countries.

Although Spain spent an average of about €1.5 billion a year from 2018 to 2022 on its high-speed network, more than any other country, most of this was to build new infrastructure with only around 16% earmarked for maintenance, renewal and upgrades.