29.10.2026 12:39
The death toll in the accident that occurred when a high-speed train traveling from Madrid to Seville in Spain collided with a high-speed train coming from the opposite direction has risen to 68. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced that three days of national mourning would be declared.
The death toll in Spain's high-speed train disaster has risen to 68, and a three-day national mourning period will be declared in the country.
The toll from the crash, in which two high-speed trains traveling from Madrid to Seville collided at 08:54 local time in Urda Municipality in the Toledo province of the Castilla-La Mancha region, is worsening.
DEATH TOLL RISES TO 68
Emiliano Garcia Page, the government president of the Castilla-La Mancha autonomous community to which the area of the train crash belongs, announced that 44 people died in the Iryo company train affected by the crash and 24 in the Renfe AVE train.
In his statement to the press at the scene, Page said that 53 injured people, 15 of them seriously, are currently being treated in hospital.
THREE DAYS OF NATIONAL MOURNING TO BE DECLARED
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who went to the crash site, announced that three days of official mourning would be declared nationwide due to the crash.
Referring also to the train crash near Cordoba on January 18 in which 46 people lost their lives, Sanchez said, "For a country like Spain, two high-speed train crashes in the same year are unacceptable." He stated that the investigation into today's train crash would be carried out to the end and that any negligence would be revealed.
Sanchez noted that all necessary measures would be taken to rebuild trust in the Spanish railway system and to further guarantee passenger safety.
"AN INCOMPREHENSIBLE SITUATION"
Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility Oscar Puente Santiago, at a press conference held at the ADIF railway main control center at Atocha train station in Madrid, said, "It cannot be explained that the control center decided for the AVE train to continue its journey while the Iryo train was stopped on the tracks. A rear-end collision on Spanish railways, such an accident is truly an incomprehensible situation."
Emphasizing that the crash did not stem from an error in the main system, Puente said that in the event of a system failure the control center intervenes, and that allowing the AVE train to continue despite a red signal caused the crash.
Puente said, "It is incomprehensible and a wrong decision to order the train to continue on its way before the problem was resolved, in an incomprehensible way," and described the crash as follows:
"The LZB control system at Urda station went out of service at 08:30 as a result of a failure in the communication of 3 computers in the network. Over a 63-kilometer area, the system lost the LZB safety system, which caused all trains traveling in that section to stop automatically. After the trains stopped at this point, the ADIF control center at Atocha Station took over the system. At 08:36, the center allowed the AVE high-speed train to continue its normal journey. The AVE train covered about 25 kilometers until it collided with the Iryo train at the entrance to Urda station (08:54)."
The Spanish minister reported that "the control center gave several wrong orders and in one case a train driver corrected the control officer who made the decision."
Puente said, "The control officer ordered all trains in the region to return to their normal speeds, but the driver of one of the trains corrected him, saying that a 'visible speed' order should be given. This means a maximum speed of 40 kilometers per hour."
CLAIM OF "HUMAN ERROR IN THE SIGNALING SYSTEM" IN THE CRASH
A Renfe AVE high-speed train traveling from Madrid to Seville and another high-speed train belonging to Iryo traveling in the opposite direction collided at 08:54 local time (10:54 Turkish time) between Urda and Los Yebenes in Toledo.
According to initial findings, it is claimed that the crash was caused by human error in the main signaling system. Due to the crash, train services between Madrid, Ciudad Real and Andalusia were temporarily suspended. Iryo announced that it had stopped all its services at Atocha train station in Madrid.
Spain's King Felipe VI, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, ministers and leaders of opposition political parties canceled their programs for today due to the crash. Meanwhile, it was reported that surgeries planned for today at all hospitals around Toledo have been postponed and that priority will be given to those injured in the crash.
SECOND TRAIN CRASH IN SPAIN
The last major train crash in Spain occurred on January 18 in the Adamuz district of Cordoba in the south of the country, when a high-speed train belonging to Iryo derailed, killing 46 people.