Spain's transport minister rejects calls to quit after deadly crash

Spain's transport minister has rejected calls for his resignation over the second train accident on his watch to cause mass casualties this year, as authorities worked to identify the victims from a crash that left at least 69 dead.

Lawmakers from across the political spectrum this week condemned Transport Minister Oscar Puente for attributing Wednesday's crash to a break in protocol by control center operators rather than accepting responsibility, with rail workers' unions calling for his immediate dismissal.

The crash, which happened near the town of Urda in central Spain, followed another accident involving the same rail companies on the same line that left 46 dead in January. 

'Providing clear explanations'

It has reopened a debate about safety and maintenance on Spain's high-speed rail network, the most extensive in Europe, as the country prepares for an election that left-leaning Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called for November 29.

"My duty now is not to focus on discussing whether I will remain in office, but on solving the problem, determining exactly what happened and providing clear explanations," Puente said at a press conference on Friday.

The train that smashed into a second stationary one was traveling at a speed between 160 and 200 km/h when the collision occurred, according to a preliminary report released by the Independent Authority for the Technical Investigation of Accidents and Incidents (AITAT).

"The sequence of malfunctions, instructions, and actions eventually led to the collision, in the absence of the necessary mitigating barriers," AITAT said in the report.

AITAT said it would not be able to confirm the exact speed of the train until it extracted information from the train's black box.

At the scene of the crash, large cranes were lifting the mangled wreckage as the Civil Guard listed 64 people as missing in what is already Spain's deadliest train accident since 2013.

'Testing proceeding slowly'

Authorities have carried out 49 autopsies so far and formally identified five people – three women and two men – Esther Padilla, spokesperson for the Castilla-La Mancha regional government, said on state television network TVE.

"Testing is proceeding slowly, although families will be contacted throughout the day so that they can come and collect their results," Padilla said.

It was unclear if all those missing were accounted for in the death toll.

No additional bodies were found when rescue teams overturned a train carriage on Thursday, Castilla-La Mancha regional leader Emiliano Garcia-Page said on TVE.

Identifying the bodies was proving difficult because many were in pieces, he said. On Thursday, rescue teams had placed partial remains in 31 bags.

"The truth is that we cannot rule out the possibility that there may be more fatalities," Garcia-Page said.

As identification of the dead continued, the debate about who was at fault intensified, with unions saying it was unfair to lay the blame on human error.

Prime Minister Sanchez vowed to find out what caused the accident.

"It is unacceptable for a country like Spain, with such a strong high-speed rail system, to suffer two accidents of this nature and magnitude in a single year," he said.

Protocol disregarded?

The collision occurred after several trains were automatically stopped due to the failure of a signaling system, after which the central control center in Madrid took over. A train operated by state-owned Renfe was authorized to proceed, even though there was a stationary Iryo-operated train ahead, according to Puente.

Audio of communications between the control center and the train drivers obtained by El Pais showed how a controller authorized the Renfe train to continue on its journey at a normal speed, which Puente said disregarded a protocol to travel at no more than 40 km/h in such circumstances.

The audio also showed the controller authorized the Renfe train, carrying 379 passengers and seven crew, to resume its journey even though the Iryo train, carrying 147 passengers and five crew, should have proceeded first according to protocol.

Raquel Ayllon, a union leader for state-owned infrastructure operator Adif, said controllers were having to operate under difficult working conditions.

Upgrade delayed

"Human error is being criticized and questioned very quickly, while people are not really focusing on the central issue: the failure of the safety system," Ayllon said on TVE.

The LZB system which failed, triggering the sequence of events that led to Wednesday's crash, was behind schedule for an upgrade, public documents show.

In September 2021 Adif awarded a contract to Thales Espana, the Spanish arm of the French equipment maker, to complete the installation of a new, standardized European system called ERTMS by early 2026 for $105 million, according to press releases on the tender.

The system has been installed across most of Spanish high-speed rail, according to a factsheet by European rail association UNIFE, which developed the new ERTMS standard. But the Madrid-Seville line, site of two fatal crashes, had fallen behind, according to the tender contract.

The contract was passed to Hitachi Rail in 2024, according to Thales, which declined to provide comment on the delay of the rollout.