Spain: the Urda collision upends the campaign, public rail deserves better than an electoral trial

On Wednesday 28 October, at around 8:53 a.m., an AVE high-speed train operated by the public company Renfe crashed into the rear of a train run by the private operator Iryo, which was stationary at the entrance to Urda station in the province of Toledo. According to AFP, at least 68 people were killed. According to Castilla-La Mancha Media, more than a hundred injured people were taken to hospitals in the region and in Madrid. The government declared three days of official mourning, from 29 to 31 October.

What we know

Transport Minister Óscar Puente gave an initial timeline. According to his statements reported by AFP and the AP news agency, the automatic train control system failed at around 8:30 a.m. over some sixty kilometres of track, bringing every train in the section to a halt. The control centre of Adif, the public network manager, then reportedly authorised traffic to resume before the system had been restored. The Renfe train is then said to have travelled about 25 kilometres, possibly at close to 200 km/h, before the impact.

The minister described this decision as "inexplicable" and cleared the drivers of blame, according to AP. Sources cited by Castilla-La Mancha Media indicate that the regulations would have required running on sight at 40 km/h. These findings remain preliminary: a judge in Orgaz has taken up the case, and the rail accident investigation commission must establish responsibilities. Asked about a possible resignation, Óscar Puente replied that he was focusing on the accident.

This is the second fatal accident on Spain's high-speed network this year. In January, a collision in Andalusia killed 46 people. The Spanish network, the second longest in the world after China's, had not had a single fatal accident in more than thirty years of operation, AP recalls.

A campaign on hold, except for the far right

The tragedy comes one month before the snap general election of 29 November. Pedro Sánchez called it on 5 October, three days after Congress rejected his housing measures, according to AFP. Speaking from Urda, he promised to go "all the way" with the investigation and to respond "with total firmness" if negligence is established, according to the newspaper La Cerca. He said it was unacceptable for a country like Spain to suffer two such accidents in the same year, while considering that the two tragedies very probably do not share the same cause.

The Socialist Party, the People's Party, the left-wing coalition and Podemos suspended their rallies, reports the website Demócrata. The leader of the right, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, called for a complete and independent review of the entire network and asked where the investments had gone, without naming anyone responsible. According to AP, he called for respect for the dead, the injured and their families.

Vox made a different choice. Santiago Abascal went ahead with his rally in Valladolid, which opened with a minute of silence. According to AP, he called the government a "criminal organisation". According to Demócrata, he also linked the accident to "climate fanaticism". The polling average compiled by that site puts the PP at 31%, the PSOE at 27.3% and Vox at 18.9%.

Public rail deserves better than a trial conducted in a few hours

The opposition's arguments must be heard. Two disasters in ten months on a network long held up as a model justify serious questions about maintenance, control and the chain of command. The call for an independent audit, made by the People's Party, is legitimate, and a government in power since 2018 must answer for it.

But two pitfalls must be avoided. The first is turning grief into a campaign weapon before the facts are established. Accusing a government of being "criminal" on the very day of the tragedy, as Vox did, helps neither the families nor the truth. The second would be to lay all the blame on a single employee of the control centre. If a human decision was decisive, we will need to understand why it was possible: staffing, training, procedures in the event of a failure, technical safeguards.

The question goes beyond Spain. Spanish high-speed rail was opened to competition in 2021, and both of this year's accidents involved a Renfe train and an Iryo train, AP notes. Nothing at this stage suggests that market opening is to blame: the failure described by the minister concerns the public infrastructure manager. But the more trains and operators share the same tracks, the more robust, well-funded and well-staffed central traffic control must be. France is directly concerned: Ouigo España, a subsidiary of SNCF Voyageurs, runs on the Adif network, and our own network is also opening up to new operators.

A European requirement

For a tradition committed to the State and to public service, the lesson is simple: rail safety is not a budgetary adjustment variable. Spain should publish the first conclusions of its investigation, before the vote if possible, without bending them to suit any camp. The European Union, which wanted a single European railway area, could also take up the matter: why not ask the European Union Agency for Railways for a public lessons-learned report, useful to every network on the continent, and check that liberalisation is everywhere accompanied by the staff needed in control centres?

France would do well to ask itself the same question. Are our signal boxes and signalling systems funded to match the traffic we want to run on them tomorrow?

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.