MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Dozens killed as two high-speed trains collide in Spain

The collision occurred shortly before 9 a.m. at kilometre 118 of the line

At least 68 people were killed on Wednesday when a Renfe AVE high-speed train ran into the back of an Iryo train that was stopped on the Madrid-Seville line near Urda station, in the province of Toledo, according to the president of the Castilla-La Mancha region, Emiliano García-Page. Another 58 people were hospitalised, 15 of them in very serious condition, and authorities fear the death toll will rise.

The collision occurred shortly before 9 a.m. at kilometre 118 of the line. According to García-Page, 24 of the dead were travelling in the lead carriage of the AVE and 44 on the Iryo train, two of whose carriages were destroyed. The Military Emergencies Unit deployed 200 personnel to search for people trapped in the wreckage, and medical helicopters flew the most seriously injured to hospitals in Toledo and Alcázar de San Juan.

Transport Minister Óscar Puente said that at around 8.30 a.m. the LZB control and safety system failed due to a communication fault in three computers, leaving a 63-kilometre stretch without it and automatically stopping six trains. The control centre of rail infrastructure manager Adif at Madrid’s Atocha station then took over and authorised the AVE to resume running normally, despite a red signal and with no speed restriction, according to the minister. The train travelled about 25 kilometres at close to 200 kilometres per hour before the impact. Puente added that the driver of another train corrected the controller, telling him the order should be to proceed “on sight”, at a maximum of 40 kilometres per hour.

“A rear-end collision on the Spanish network is truly implausible,” said Puente, who described the control centre’s decision as “inexplicable” and ruled out resigning for now. The Civil Guard and the Railway Accident Investigation Commission are questioning the operator who was managing traffic.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who travelled to the scene, declared three days of official mourning. “We will get to the bottom of this and, if there has been negligence, it will be known,” he said. “It is not acceptable for a country like Spain to suffer two high-speed rail accidents in the same year,” he added, referring to the Adamuz crash in Córdoba, which killed 46 people in January. The high-speed line between Madrid and Andalusia remains suspended with no date for reopening, and the train drivers’ union Semaf kept in place a strike called for Thursday over rail safety.