The Renfe high-speed train carrying 397 passengers suddenly finds another Iryo train in front of it, stopped on the tracks with 147 people on board: the crash is inevitable. The impact is extremely violent, convoys of both trains derail and fall from the embankment. Unfortunately, the toll has already risen to 68 victims, although this number is constantly updated. The tragic clash occurred in Castile-La Mancha, between the towns of Los Yebenes and Urda (Toledo). Nine Italians were also among those involved in the accident. But how was it possible? Whose responsibility is it? Let’s try to answer these questions by analyzing the official statements released so far.
The reconstruction of the accident
The collision occurred near the municipality of Urda, in the province of Toledo, at kilometer 118 of the Madrid-Seville high-speed line. It is one of the busiest railway corridors in Spain. The first train in this story is Iryo number 6076, a series 109 train. There are 147 passengers on board. Shortly before 9am the main safety system, the LZB, goes haywire on a 63 km long stretch due to a communication failure between some computers on the network.
The reserve system called BSL comes into operation – which we will see in detail later. For now what we need to know is that this involves an automatic stop of all trains in the area, including Iryo. In the following minutes the control room gradually gives the order to restart. The Iryo, however, remains stuck on the track between Mora and Urda. Why? There is no official confirmation on this: it is possible that he simply had not yet received the green light from the control room, but this is only a hypothesis. But this is where the second train comes in. Behind the Iryo arrives Renfe AVE number 2080, a series 103 train, with 397 passengers.
The AVE driver finds a red signal and, given the failure of the main safety system, asks the Atocha Control Center by radio for permission to pass it. And here is the crucial point: according to government sources also cited by El País, the control center inexplicably gave the authorization, even if the Iryo was still there, stopped.
The AVE then sets off again and travels 25 kilometers at a speed of up to 200 km/h. Suddenly, however, the Iryo train finds itself in front of it. He can’t do anything, he tries to brake but doesn’t have time: the authorities confirm that at those speeds at least 4 km of free track would be needed. The AVE hits the Iryo. The impact is extremely violent: two Iryo carriages end up down the embankment and a third goes off the tracks. But the impact also derails the train coming from behind: the first AVE carriage also leaves the tracks. The number of victims, as we have seen, is very high and the same goes for the number of wounded.
But how do safety systems work along the line? And why didn’t they avoid the disaster?
The safety of the railway line
The first system is the LZB, which we can imagine as a kind of automatic co-pilot. Its task is conceptually simple: it knows where the train in front is and, if the driver does not slow down in time, it brakes the train itself. That morning, however, this LZB broke down and it is in these cases that a reserve system called BSL comes into operation. The first step, as we said, is to stop the trains. After being given the go-ahead from the control room, the driver should drive at reduced speed relying on the light signals along the line, which indicate whether the section ahead is clear. It’s like driving in the fog: you go slowly and rely on the signs and directions from the control center. In this mode, therefore, safety depends much more on people.
As we have seen, however, the AVE not only receives the green light to pass after the red signal, but does not even moderate its speed because the control center operator tells it to resume normal travel. Among other things, another train also appears to have received the erroneous order to resume “normal travel”: on that train, however, it was the engineer who highlighted the error, saying that the protocol requires “running on sight”.
So why was the AVE allowed to proceed at normal speed even though the Iryo was still stopped on the track? Was this actually human error from the control room?
The possible cause: human error?
To answer we need to understand how this control room works. In Spain, traffic is managed by the Regulation and Control Centres, which operate 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Inside there are traffic regulators, who have integrated management, supervision and control systems, and who can speak via radio with the drivers. Under normal conditions their work is largely supervisory. As we have seen, if a train gets too close to the one in front, the automatic LZB system will brake it.
When that system breaks down, however, as in this case, things change. The human role becomes central: it is the control center that tells the driver whether he can move forward or not. And that’s exactly what would have happened this morning. According to El Español, the AVE train driver found a red signal and asked the Atocha Control Center for authorization to pass it. According to the investigators’ initial hypotheses, reported by El País, an Atocha operator would have mistakenly given the order to continue, even though the Iryo was still occupying the track and the signal was red. The reasons behind this error are not currently known even to investigators.
There is also another reason why this news has shocked Spain so much. On the same line, nine months ago, there had already been a tragedy, on January 18, 2026. In that case the accident occurred near Adamuz, in the province of Córdoba, a high-speed train derailed and a second train hit it, derailing in turn. 46 people died, including the driver of the Renfe train, and 292 were injured. The causes, however, were completely different. In Adamuz the problem was the infrastructure: according to the preliminary investigation by the Guardia Civil, the breakage of the track was probably due to faulty welding. So two accidents on the same line a few months apart but with two different dynamics. It’s normal for people to be afraid. And precisely for this reason it is right to ask one last question…
Should we be afraid of traveling by train?
The answer is actually no, the train remains one of the safest means of transport we have. If we analyze data from the European Railway Agency (ERA), the risk of death for a rail passenger is around a third compared to buses and coaches and around 28 times less than for those traveling by car. So accidents are very rare, but when they happen they involve many people at once. On the roads there are many more victims, but they are spread across thousands of individual accidents that rarely make the headlines.
Finally, in safety engineering every accident becomes a lesson. Adamuz’s investigations have already uncovered procedural and maintenance problems. Urda’s will have to clarify how the backup procedures work when the automatic system fails. And it’s worth mentioning that the line is in the process of migrating to ERTMS, a more modern technology that facilitates interoperability with the rest of Europe
