OMM Newsroom
At least 69 people have died in Spain’s second rail tragedy this year after a high-speed train crash near Urda on Wednesday. Survivors have described scenes of chaos and horror, while leaked audio recordings linked to the incident have added to public disbelief and anger in a highly politicised climate, with Spaniards due to vote in a month. BBC World reported.
“You don’t know what’s happening, you don’t know what has happened, you just know that you’re being thrown around in a matter of seconds,” said Iñaki García, 60.
He was aboard a stationary “Iryo” train on the Madrid-Seville line, near Urda, about 140km (87 miles) south of the capital, when it was hit from behind by a “Renfe” train. “There were people injured, walking around, there were dead people,” García said. “In the next carriage along there were a lot of dead people.”
A young man told the BBC in a trembling voice: “I don’t know if that’s something I’ll ever recover from.”
Antonio García, a pharmacist from Urda, was among the first to reach the crash site, carrying first-aid supplies and medicine. “One of [the passengers] was saying goodbye to his wife and children. His last words were ‘God is good’,” he told Spanish radio.
Locals brought blankets, food and water to a nearby sports hall converted into a makeshift hospital. “We all started to turn out to help and we organised ourselves as best we could,” said local woman Rosa María Domínguez, describing the scene as “a horror film”.
The crash has brought back memories of a collision on the same Madrid-Seville route in Adamuz nine months ago, which killed 46 people. The two tragedies have prompted confusion and questions about how the incidents could have happened. Spain’s high-speed rail network, the largest in Europe, was previously seen as a model for its neighbours. The Adamuz crash prompted a nationwide debate about whether the network was fit for purpose.
The latest incident has increased pressure on the left-wing government of Pedro Sánchez during an election campaign in which his Socialist PSOE party is behind the conservatives in most opinion polls. A demonstration on Wednesday night over the government’s handling of the rail network drew far-right groups, which clashed with police.
Most parties, apart from the far-right Vox, suspended campaigning. Sánchez has visited the crash scene twice, while his rival, People’s Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, visited Urda on Thursday.
Transport Minister Óscar Puente said from the outset that a computer failure followed by human error was the likely cause. Late on Wednesday, leaked audio of a control-room operator speaking with train drivers appeared to support that explanation.
Puente has long been a target of criticism from the right, which is expected to intensify after two of Spain’s worst rail tragedies occurred during his tenure. Spain’s largest train drivers’ union, “Semaf”, condemned the leaked recordings as irresponsible and slanted. The union had already called a strike for Thursday, seeking to ensure that “urgency to travel is never prioritised over safety”.
Train driver Vicente Almenar told Spanish media: “They always look for the last link in the chain, where it’s weakest, but here the entire procedure failed because we don’t even know what our colleague was seeing on the screen.”
Sánchez had not expected rail safety to dominate his campaign, but it now appears increasingly likely to do so. After two accidents and more than 100 deaths on the same high-speed line, Feijóo told reporters in Urda on Thursday: “The Spanish people need answers. They are wondering what is happening to high-speed rail in their country.” He added that politics was not about talking, but acting.
