{"id":108492,"date":"2026-10-30T00:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T00:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/108492\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T00:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T00:29:10","slug":"after-crash-spain-asks-if-its-train-system-is-too-old-and-prone-to-human-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/108492\/","title":{"rendered":"After Crash, Spain Asks if Its Train System Is Too Old and Prone to Human Error"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2021, Isabel Pardo de Vera, then the president of Adif, Spain\u2019s state-owned railway infrastructure manager, awarded a contract<\/a> to upgrade an aging rail line safety system between Madrid and Seville by January 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cLine renewal had been planned for a long time,\u201d she said in an interview on Thursday. But after she had moved on from the position and eventually left the government, she was surprised, she said, to discover this year that the enhanced system still \u201cwasn\u2019t implemented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of Spain focused on technical questions about the same railway signal system after one high-speed train rear-ended another stopped on the same tracks of the Madrid-Seville line on Wednesday, killing at least 69 people, officials said. More than 50 people were still in hospitals on Thursday, about 15 in critical condition. Adif declined to comment about its rail safety system.<\/p>\n

In a time of concern that humans could be losing control over technology, the crash prompted questions instead about a lack of technological safeguards against human error. Spain\u2019s vast rail system, once a point of pride \u2014 and an attraction to a growing number of tourists, foreigners and boosters of Spanish growth \u2014 has become a source of anxiety. The crash, coming after a disastrous collision in January on the same line, intensified attention on Spain\u2019s aging infrastructure, lack of maintenance and overall safety issues.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, reports emerged of previous safety concerns.<\/p>\n

One report<\/a>, using data from Adif, listed all the signal problems that riddled a stretch of railway in central Spain now known as the site of Wednesday\u2019s deadly crash. Another highlighted a warning by Spain\u2019s railway accident investigation commission<\/a> that the country put too much reliance on the \u201chuman factor\u201d of train controllers. Still another focused on a top train executive telling a Spanish Senate committee<\/a> that the signaling system on the Madrid-Seville line was \u201cfairly old\u201d and that whenever it went down, it forced delays.<\/p>\n

As Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez, facing elections next month, promised to get to the bottom of the crash, his left-wing government pointed to human error. A train traffic control operator, officials said, told the rear train to resume its normal high speed even though another train was stopped on the same tracks after the automatic safety system had gone down.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Mr. S\u00e1nchez met for hours with Adif officials at their headquarters in Madrid\u2019s Atocha train station. Neither he or the association\u2019s train traffic controllers would comment on their discussion. Earlier in the day, he went to the town of Urda, near the crash site, to show his support for grieving families and a shaken country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to reassure all citizens that the entire central government and all the institutions of the state are working day and night, not only to respond to the needs of the victims\u2019 families,\u201d he said, \u201cbut also to establish every last detail of what caused this tragedy and to strengthen safety measures so that something like this never happens again.\u201d<\/p>\n

But some critics argued that Mr. S\u00e1nchez should examine his own government.<\/p>\n

Ms. Pardo de Vera, who left the government in 2023 and is under investigation over accusations of corruption in handling unrelated public contracts, which she denies, said the government\u2019s emphasis on human error did not erase its recent shortcomings when it came to \u201cmaintenance, or construction, or operations, or traffic management.\u201d She added, \u201cwhat they have done to safety, that is the root problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adif did not return a request for comment about the criticism.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the government\u2019s transportation minister, \u00d3scar Puente, told reporters that the crash had resulted from an \u201cinexplicable\u201d decision by train traffic control operators in Madrid.<\/p>\n

About 8:30 a.m., half an hour after the latter train \u2014 run by the national operator, Renfe \u2014 departed, the aging safety system along that section of the railway went down because of a computer failure.<\/p>\n

Following protocol, Mr. Puente said, a train traffic control center in Madrid took over. An operator, who has not been identified, told the Renfe train to resume its journey.<\/p>\n

According to the Spanish newspaper El Pa\u00eds, which obtained audio of the exchanges<\/a> between the conductors and the operators in Madrid, an operator authorized the driver of the Iryo train to resume \u201cnormal speed.\u201d But seven minutes later, the Iryo driver called to report that she could not restart the train.<\/p>\n

Mr. Puente said the Madrid operators had told the Renfe train conductor to resume regular travel \u201cdespite there being another train ahead of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Renfe train traveled 15 miles, or about 25 kilometers, before rear-ending the other train, which had remained stopped on the tracks.<\/p>\n

Questions on Thursday centered on why the stopped Iryo train didn\u2019t start again, as Madrid\u2019s train traffic operators had authorized it at 8:41 a.m. to resume its journey.<\/p>\n

The Iryo conductor twice sought unsuccessfully to restart the train, El Pa\u00eds reported on Thursday. Unlike the older Renfe train barreling toward it, the Iryo train was relatively new, and so took longer to sync with the old safety system protecting train traffic, causing a delay of nearly four minutes each time to restart.<\/p>\n

The Iryo conductor made it clear to the traffic controllers that she was stopped, according to the recording, but an operator instead could be heard saying she was traveling forward at a slow speed.<\/p>\n

The Renfe train slammed into it at 8:53 a.m.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, details about the victims also began to emerge. Among the dead were Japanese and South Korean nationals who had been traveling on a line popular with tourists coming from Madrid, the capital, to the historic city of Seville. The conductor of the rear train, Antonio Acedo, also died in the crash<\/a>, according to the political party to which he belonged.<\/p>\n

While the government urged a time of grieving, the political opponents of Mr. S\u00e1nchez didn\u2019t waste a minute to react, with national elections set for Nov. 29.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not accept a period of mourning that silences us while Spaniards are dying,\u201d Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right party Vox, said at a rally on Wednesday evening in Valladolid, outside Madrid. Valladolid is the hometown of Mr. Puente. Mr. Abascal has taken to calling him the \u201cminister of death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Puente fell into the political cross hairs within hours of the crash, when the first question put to him in a news conference was whether he would quit. (He said he wasn\u2019t thinking about himself at the moment.)<\/p>\n

But criticism from the left and the right has only ratcheted up since then, as Mr. Puente, known as the government\u2019s social-media-addicted attack dog, has overseen two historic rail disasters linked to infrastructure. It didn\u2019t help that he recently danced on a talk show<\/a> set featuring straphangers on a bumpy ride. During that appearance, he made a humorous reference to delays caused by system failures on Renfe.<\/p>\n

There was a deeply different mood in Atocha station on Thursday, where workers for Renfe, in purple-trimmed jackets, observed minutes of silence next to Iryo workers in red blazers. Many of the Iryo workers wept and hugged one another. One woman, Mar\u00eda, said she was there to mourn two of her friends who did \u201conboard sales,\u201d pushing a cart selling sodas and snacks up the aisles.<\/p>\n

Sa\u00fal S\u00e1nchez, a volunteer psychologist with Madrid\u2019s Civil Protection office, had spent the morning counseling the family of victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are angry, frustrated, irate, a lot of things,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cThey want information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carlos Barrag\u00e1n contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2021, Isabel Pardo de Vera, then the president of Adif, Spain\u2019s state-owned railway infrastructure manager, awarded a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4222,37150,37151,7450,36856,36855,7449,17,36862],"class_list":["post-108492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-4222","tag-high-speed-rail-projects","tag-infrastructure-public-works","tag-pedro-1972","tag-railroads","tag-renfe-operadora","tag-sanchez-perez-castejon","tag-spain","tag-spain-train-crash-october-28"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}