Spain began three days of national mourning on Thursday after two high-speed trains collided near the town of Urda, killing 69 people and leaving dozens more in hospital, the country's deadliest rail disaster in more than a decade. Leaked audio recordings of the minutes before the crash have intensified scrutiny of how one train was cleared down a track where another had stalled.

Two Renfe Series 100 high-speed trains at a railway maintenance depot in Hornachuelos, Spain.
A Renfe Series 100 train operating AVE service 2080 between Madrid Puerta de Atocha and Seville, pictured at the ADIF maintenance depot in Hornachuelos. Photograph: Kabelleger / Wikimedia Commons. Source: Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. No modifications.

The crash

The collision happened just before 9 a.m. on Wednesday on the Madrid-Seville high-speed line, near Urda in Toledo province. Minutes earlier, the LZB train-control system at Urda station had failed because of a communications fault in three network computers, leaving a 63-kilometre stretch without the automatic safety system and forcing six trains to stop, Transport Minister Óscar Puente said. Investigators are examining the instructions issued from the control centre in the minutes that followed.

A Renfe high-speed train traveling from Madrid to Seville then struck the rear of a stationary Iryo train on the same track at more than 160 kilometres per hour, according to a preliminary assessment reported by laSexta. Carriages derailed. The railway accident investigation commission put the death toll at 69 on Thursday, revised down from the 74 initially reported by the transport ministry. Dozens of the injured remained in hospital, 15 of them in intensive care. On Friday morning, Emiliano García-Page, the president of Castilla-La Mancha, said the confirmed toll remained at 69 but warned that it could rise, with 70 people reported missing and forensic teams still working to identify partial remains recovered from the wreckage. Health officials said 39 people remained in hospital on Friday and 71 had been discharged.

The bodies of the victims were taken to the main forensic institute in Toledo, where relatives have been giving DNA samples to help with identification. Among the dead are Julieta Gallego, a 24-year-old long jumper who competed for the Madrid athletics club AD Sprint, and a former government minister, the BBC reported. Spain's foreign ministry said 42 foreign citizens from seven countries were among those affected, one of whom was killed.

The investigation

Three audio recordings of conversations between train drivers and the control centre at Madrid's Atocha station, leaked to Spanish media, appear to show that one high-speed train was given clearance to proceed even though another train had stalled on the track about 25 kilometres ahead. The cause of the collision remains under investigation.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, visiting the emergency command centre in Toledo on Thursday, said every institution of the state was working “to uncover every last detail of this tragedy and to strengthen safety measures so that something like this never happens again.”

Puente said rear-end collisions such as Wednesday's were “highly unlikely” and suggested the accident could have been caused by human error under “inexplicable” circumstances.

A red and white Iryo high-speed train passing at speed through countryside in Toledo province, Spain.
An Iryo train on the Madrid-Seville high-speed line passes near Mora, in the Toledo province where Wednesday's collision occurred. Photograph: Chencho Ruiz / Wikimedia Commons. Source: Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. No modifications.

Mourning and political fallout

Spain began three days of national mourning on Thursday, and King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia visited victims of the crash. The disaster is the country's deadliest rail crash since 2013, when 79 people died in a derailment in Santiago de Compostela, and it came 10 months after 46 people were killed when two trains collided on the same line near the town of Adamuz, an earlier tragedy that had already prompted a national debate about whether the rail network was fit for purpose.

The disaster lands a month before a national election in which Sánchez's Socialist Party trails the conservatives in most opinion polls. On Wednesday night, a demonstration protesting the government's handling of the rail network drew far-right groups that clashed with riot police deployed in Madrid. All main parties other than the far-right Vox have suspended campaigning, and the opposition People's Party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, visited Urda on Thursday. Train drivers went on strike on Friday to demand more investment in rail safety. Renfe cancelled about one in eight commercial services and Ouigo suspended all of its trains on Friday and Monday, while the Semaf union announced two more strike days for November 10 and 12.

Triston Grant · October 30, 2026 · Global Politics & Human Rights