URDA, Spain — Emergency crews worked through the night to pull victims from mangled carriages Thursday after a high-speed train rear-ended another in central Spain, killing at least 68 people in the nation’s second fatal rail collision this year.
The crash occurred Wednesday morning near Urda, a small town roughly 80 miles south of Madrid, along the heavily traveled line connecting the capital with Seville in Andalusia. A train operated by the state-owned rail carrier Renfe slammed into the rear of a stationary locomotive run by the private rail consortium Iryo, violently throwing passenger cars off the tracks and into neighboring olive groves.
Reports on injuries varied as hospitals treated victims across the region. The Guardian reported that 107 people required hospital care, with 15 listed in serious condition, while Al Jazeera put the injury toll at 77. Spanish authorities halted all high-speed rail service between Madrid and Andalusia as forensic investigators and heavy cranes descended on the site.
An ‘Inexplicable’ Command
Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente told reporters that the crash stemmed from a breakdown in automated safeguards followed by human error at dispatch. According to Puente, a computer communication glitch disabled the security system along a 39-mile stretch of track at 8:30 a.m., causing traffic to halt automatically.
At that time, the Iryo train sat stopped near Urda, while the Renfe train was halted about 15 miles behind it. Minutes later, the central command center inexplicably cleared the trailing Renfe train to resume full speed despite an active stop signal remaining on the route, Puente said. The Renfe train struck the rear of the Iryo train at 8:53 a.m. Puente emphasized that the train drivers were not responsible for the collision.
Survivors described scenes of sudden devastation. Fernando Seco, who was aboard the Renfe train, told Spanish state television TVE that passengers were flung into the air during the impact, after which he saw a carriage split in two with victims trapped inside. Doctor Sebastian Herrero, a passenger who tended to victims, told Al Jazeera that the impact left portions of the front carriages looking like a twisted bomb site.
Second Tragedy Shakes Government
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited the crash site on Wednesday and declared three days of official national mourning beginning Thursday. “It is not acceptable for a country like Spain to endure two high-speed train accidents in the same year,” Sánchez said, promising a rigorous inquiry and severe accountability if negligence is uncovered, according to NPR.
The catastrophe arrives just nine months after another deadly crash along the same corridor. In January, 46 people died near Adamuz when a train jumped tracks and struck an oncoming service, a disaster that also involved Renfe and Iryo trainsets. Until this year, Spain’s high-speed rail network had maintained a spotless fatal-accident record since its debut more than 30 years ago.
The disaster quickly sparked political furor ahead of a snap general election scheduled for Nov. 29. Conservative Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo paused campaign appearances out of respect for the victims but demanded an independent review of the entire national rail system, asking what precautions were taken after the January tragedy. Far-right Vox leader Santiago Abascal fiercely condemned the government, while a union linked to Vox held demonstrations outside government offices in Madrid demanding Puente’s resignation.
To assist families waiting for news, the Civil Guard opened offices in Madrid, Toledo, Córdoba and Seville to collect DNA samples for victim identification. Regional officials cautioned that the death toll could climb further as emergency workers reach the most crushed lower sections of the train cars.
