At least 69 people have died and hundreds were hurt when two trains collided near Urda, in Spain's Toledo province. The dead include Antonio Acedo, driver of the AVE high-speed train, who had earlier warned about poor working conditions and safety gaps on Spain's railways.
The Castilla-La Mancha regional government first reported at least 30 dead on Wednesday. The toll later rose to 68.
See also: Spain train crash: 68 dead, survivors describe the impact
The trains collided at 8.53am local time at the 118km mark of the Madrid–Seville high-speed line. Renfe's AVE 2080, which weighs 450 tonnes, hit the back of train 6076, run by private operator Iryo, which was standing still. Both were heading for Seville. The Iryo train is a Hitachi ETR 1000, a new model in service since 2022.
At 8.30am the LZB signalling system, which dates from 1992, crashed because of a computer fault along 63km of the line. Six trains stopped at once, including the two that later collided.
Sources close to Iryo say its driver, whose name has not been released, restarted LZB twice on the instructions of Adif dispatchers. Each attempt took 3-4 minutes, about 8 minutes in all. The electronics failed and the link to the traffic control system did not come back.
Iryo's internal rules require drivers to report every problem to the company's operations centre. After the second failed attempt, the driver called the centre and asked maintenance staff for help to get the train moving. She was also in contact with Adif's traffic control centre, and told it the train was standing before the entry signal of Urda station.
At 8.41am, 11 minutes after the system failed, she got the first order to move on, direct from Adif's centre at Madrid's Atocha station. She replied that the system was not responding.
The AVE was 25km behind her. It had run for 17 minutes in "normal running" mode before the crash, on an Adif dispatcher's orders and with nothing blocking the track. The speed limit on that stretch is up to 200km/h, and the AVE's actual speed has not yet been officially established. At 200km/h, heavy trains on Spain's high-speed lines need about 4km to stop.
The impact came while the driver was on the phone to Iryo's technical service. A few seconds after the crash she called the company's control centre again, in shock, and described how bad it was. She is a member of the Semaf union, which says she is "still in deep shock, but with a clear conscience, because she knows she took every step strictly by the rulebook".
Iryo holds the audio recordings of the calls. Together with data from the black box, they will be the main evidence in the court and technical inquiries.
Acedo was 36 and had driven trains since 2012. He tried to brake, but there was no time to stop. A young trainee sitting beside him in the cab also died. Acedo was also a photographer and a member of the political group Izquierda Española. He leaves a pregnant wife.
Paula Fraga, a lawyer and fellow party member, said Acedo was deeply worried by what he saw at work, and at times afraid. She said he was among the first to speak out against lower standards and harsh working conditions, long before the crash near Adamuz. That crash killed 46 people nine months ago, and Acedo was in despair afterwards.
Fraga added that he often said that if things did not change fundamentally, it would all happen again, and in the end workers would be blamed for politicians' mistakes. She said this is happening now.
Transport minister Óscar Puente was quick to blame the duty controller at Adif's control centre at Atocha station. He said computer system crashes are routine and that technology does not give wrong orders. He admitted that LZB is an outdated system awaiting replacement.
The rail sector had been openly warning about the failures for months. Iryo chief executive Fabrizio Favara told the Spanish Senate 23 days before the crash that when the signal on the train loses contact with the signal on the line, the train stops by itself and stays blocked. "The most common problem we face, apart from extraordinary events like the fires, is with the LZB signalling system," Favara said. He added that constant outages on the Madrid–Andalusia line stop Iryo's trains and keep traffic from returning to normal.
Spain spends 16% of its funding on maintaining and upgrading trains. In Italy, Germany and France the share is between 33% and 39%.
The crash came a day before a planned 24-hour strike by Renfe drivers, called by Spain's biggest rail union.