“Updated 05:53, 28 October 2026

At least 31 passengers have died, and more than 80 have been injured after two high-speed trains collided in Spain.

An Iryo service travelling from Madrid to Seville reportedly came to a stop near the city of Toledo before a Renfe train on the same route struck the stationary locomotive.

A number of carriages from both trains derailed following the crash, with most of the victims believed to have been on board two train cars that have plunged down the embankment at the scene.
………
Passenger Sebastián Herrero, who was travelling on the Iryo train, told Spanish newspaper El Mundo that he was 'thrown against the seats' when the trains collided and described how he was 'in the air for about four or five seconds', which felt like 'a lifetime.'

The 46-year-old continued: 'There are three carriages of the Iryo, the three at the end, from which they keep taking people out and putting sheets on them. Corpses. It's apocalyptic. In those three carriages, I find it very hard to believe that there are any living people. It's a twisted mass of metal. It's as if they had planted a bomb.' …”

https://mol.im/a/16245127

Is it just me or does Spain seem to have a few hi-speed train wrecks every year? I do have to say this factored into my decision to take the slow train with more stops enroute to barcelona over the summer since there was a derailment not terribly long before we left for Europe.

Terrible shame either way.

Those trains travel at 200mph...a crash is going to be absolutely catastrophic. We rode on a couple of them just a few weeks ago when we were in Spain, and they were awesome.

I don't understand how in the modern era with computerized safety systems and track controls something like this can happen. Something must have failed or there had to be a total breakdown in communication.

One of the trains involved was an Iryo...a separate, private company that operates on the government (ADIF) owned rail network. The other train was a RENFE, the government-owned rail operator. I wonder if that somehow factored into the crash. Possibly a breakdown in communication or some other integration problem between the systems of the two different operators.

Either way, prayers for the injured and those working to treat them. The number of dead being quoted has got to be far below the number of serious injuries that are going to need treated. It's a relatively rural area at least an hour (at 200mph) from Madrid, and I'm sure they're well beyond capacity trying to care for them all.

So the Iryo train stops due to a signal failure and the RENFE gov't train rams into the back of it. And the driver of the RENFE train didn't see a wreck in his immediate future?

Updated report:

“Updated 11:23, 28 October 2026

At least 68 passengers have died, and dozens have been injured after two high-speed trains collided in Spain.

An Iryo service travelling from Madrid to Seville reportedly came to a stop near the city of Toledo due to a signal failure before.

Ten minutes later, a Renfe train on the same route struck the stationary locomotive after the central command centre failed to warn of the disruption and told the train to continue its journey.
………
Spain's Transport Minister Óscar Puente said that the accident was caused by what he called the 'inexplicable' order from a central command centre for Spain's trains after a security system had failed. He said the train engineers were not to blame. …”

https://mol.im/a/16245127

So the automated system failed, both trains stopped, and then the control center verbally authorized RENFE to start moving again with no speed restrictions. That's some unfathomable incompetence.

quote:

Originally posted by Anubismp:
Is it just me or does Spain seem to have a few hi-speed train wrecks every year? I do have to say this factored into my decision to take the slow train with more stops enroute to barcelona over the summer since there was a derailment not terribly long before we left for Europe.

Terrible shame either way.

Five this year, just on the high-speed system alone.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
So the automated system failed, both trains stopped, and then the control center verbally authorized RENFE to start moving again with no speed restrictions. That's some unfathomable incompetence.

Lot of fingers getting pointed at the Sanchez government for protecting and shielding various transportation officials who siphoned funds for personal usage while ignoring infrastructure problems and protecting incompetent union members.

Much more damning info later in the article.

“Updated 05:32, 29 October 2026

Violent demonstrations erupted in Madrid last night amid growing public anger over the failures that led to Wednesday's deadly train collision, which killed 69 people.

It comes as an audio recording from the control centre, made minutes before the crash, has emerged, revealing how operators failed to warn one of the train drivers of the impending collision.

This is Spain’s third deadly railway disaster this year, following two crashes in January, one of which killed 47 people and the other of which claimed the life of the train driver, with dozens more injured. …”

https://mol.im/a/16248311

Sounds to me like these particular protests may be entirely warranted. Especially if the Government has been complicit in diverting railroad infrastructure funds or fostering a culture of lax safety standards amongst railroad staff. It's insane to me that a dispatcher would verbally override an automated safety stop and clear the train to continue at unrestricted speed without confirming the track was clear. I'm sure there were protocols that got skipped here.

That laxidasical attitude makes me think that this was likely a pretty common occurrence, and the operators eventually just got sick of all the false positives and stopped trusting the shitty system. Have to override the faulty system enough times and you start taking shortcuts, get away with shortcuts enough times and it becomes the practice. And if management allows it to continue instead of eliminating the shortcuts and fixing the crappy system, eventually this happens.

I don't work on the railroad or know anything about running one, but I've seen this problem play out on a smaller scale right here at home. Our town is quad-sected by two major rail lines. The north-south one is particularly notorious for faulty signals that will drop the crossing arms for hours when no train is coming. We notify the railroad constantly, but it keeps happening. Eventually the locals get sick of it and start driving around the arms. Let that go on long enough, and eventually somebody gets pancaked by a train.

Safety systems are only effective if people obey them. People will only obey them if they trust them, and for people to trust them they have to work. And from what I've seen, railroad systems suck, at least here in the US. It's not like it's air-traffic control where you've got a 360 degree environment plus altitude to deal with. It's a railroad...basically a one-dimensional system where everything happens in a straight line and is contained to set tracks. It shouldn't be that hard.

Yikes. We took one from Madrid to Barcelona, very nice ride. That won't be happening again