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The death toll from Spain’s high-speed rail disaster rose to 69 on Thursday, as questions mounted over why safety systems failed to prevent a train from crashing into another that was stopped ahead. Anadolu Agency reported the latest developments.
Emiliano García-Page, president of Castile-La Mancha, announced the latest death following Wednesday’s collision near Urda in Toledo province.
Of 110 people hospitalized, 60 had been discharged and 50 remained under treatment, García-Page said. Four of the 15 critically injured patients were improving, offering grounds for cautious optimism, he added.
Crews were removing wreckage and identifying victims after recovering additional human remains overnight. García-Page said authorities did not expect to find more bodies beneath the carriages.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pledged to establish what happened and prevent another disaster.
“The entire central government is working day and night to respond to victims’ families, clarify every last detail of this tragedy and strengthen safety so this does not happen again,” he said at a joint news conference with García-Page.
Safety systems and maintenance under scrutiny
Transport Minister Óscar Puente said on Wednesday that a technical failure in the LZB automatic train protection system stopped at least six trains before controllers authorized a “Renfe” train to resume normal speed, meaning up to 200 kilometers (124 miles) per hour.
Puente called the decision “inexplicable,” given that an “Iryo” train remained stationary ahead. The controller has reportedly been questioned by Spanish police.
Recordings broadcast by Spanish media captured the authorization to resume normal running. According to the recordings, the “Iryo” driver had also reported being unable to move about five minutes before the impact.
The disaster has renewed scrutiny of safeguards for situations in which automatic protection fails. Spain’s rail accident investigation commission warned after a 2024 incident in Cuenca that the only effective barrier against a potential collision had been a controller’s visual check that the track section was clear. That appears to have been the case again in Wednesday’s crash.
The safeguard depended entirely on human judgment and could fail, the commission said, recommending technical protections, according to a report cited by “Cadena SER”.
Experts also questioned infrastructure upkeep and operational decisions. Spain spent €95,860 ($106,812) per kilometer on rail maintenance in 2022, roughly half the EU average, according to European Commission figures cited by “El País”.
Meanwhile, high-speed passenger numbers reached 44.5 million last year, double the 2019 total, the newspaper reported.
Engineer Jordi Vinolas Prat told “El País” that the system itself “worked perfectly” by stopping the trains, but said the key question concerned internal protocol and how this type of mistake was allowed to happen.
Disaster prompts calls for an independent review
The crash comes amid campaigning for Spain’s national elections and follows January’s high-speed collision in Adamuz, which killed 46 people. Sánchez said on Wednesday that two high-speed rail disasters in one year were “unacceptable.”
Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo called for a “complete and independent review” of the rail network and answers about warnings received over the past year. The left-wing “Frente Amplio” also called for an independent audit and for the transport minister to testify in the Spanish parliament.
The far-right “Vox” party was the only party to continue campaigning on Wednesday. Its leader, Santiago Abascal, blamed the disaster on Sánchez’s “corruption and ideological fanaticism.”
