Transport Minister Óscar Puente said in a press conference that the state-operated Renfe train slamming into the rear of a stationary private train operated by Iryo was due to an “inexplicable” order from a command center for Spain’s trains. Puente said the center had a computer malfunction before the order.
Puente said that they have identified the person who decided to let the Renfe train continue moving even though the Iryo one had already stopped, but he has not spoken to the control center operator. “This person is subject to whatever the investigation determines,” Puente said in the press conference.
Renfe said train services between Madrid, Ciudad Real, and Andalusia have been suspended.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who visited the crash site, announced that his government would declare three days of mourning in response and vowed an investigation. “What is unacceptable for a country like Spain is to suffer two high-speed rail accidents in the same year,” Sánchez said, though he noted that it “is highly likely that the two accidents are unrelated.”
The crashes involved a Renfe high-speed train bound for Seville with 393 people on board, and an Iryo train carrying 151 passengers. The Renfe train departed Madrid at 8:00 a.m. local time, while the Iryo train left a little earlier at 7:54 a.m., plying the same route.
Puente, in the press conference, said that at around 8:30 a.m., three computers on the railway network experienced a communication failure, taking the LZB control system offline along a 63 km (39 mi) stretch of the track. This automatically stopped about six trains traveling on that section, Puente said. The central command center would assume manual management of rail traffic.
What to know about Spanish high-speed rail
Spain is among the world leaders in investing in domestic high-speed rail infrastructure—defined as rails for trains that can travel 250 km/h (155 mph) and over, according to the European Commission’s Ninth Rail Market Monitoring report last year. The report shows that of European Union countries, Spain allocated the most to high-speed rail between 2018 and 2022, averaging €1.5 billion (around $1.67 billion) per year.
The European country only legally opened its domestic commercial high-speed passenger rail market to private competitors in December 2020, and Iryo became one of the commercial high-speed operators in Spain in 2022.
Spanish news outlet El Debate reported, citing data from the State Railway Safety Agency, that the number of “significant accidents” on the country’s rail network has increased over the years.
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