Spain's second deadly rail crash in eight months puts network safety at centre of election campaign

Spain's transport ministry says a chain of failures caused Wednesday's collision near Toledo that killed at least 69 people — the country's second mass-casualty rail crash in eight months and a sudden liability for the government ahead of the 29 November snap election.

After a computer malfunction knocked out the German-made signalling system installed in 1992, railway network officials took manual control and authorized a train to proceed along a track where another had stopped, causing the deadly collision.

Jaime Tamarit, a former director of a European railway-signalling certification laboratory who helped oversee development of the pan-European safety system, said the failure pointed to infrastructure in "a terrible state." He argued that the whole purpose of a train-protection system is to guard against human error, and that its collapse revealed chronic underinvestment.

Between 2018 and 2022, Spain allocated an average of €1.5 billion a year to high-speed rail — more than France or Germany — but roughly 84 per cent of that went to new construction. Maintenance, renewals and upgrades accounted for about 16 per cent of Spanish high-speed rail spending, compared with 34 to 39 per cent in France, Germany and Italy, according to European Commission data.

Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said the deaths of more than 100 people in two accidents in eight months raised serious questions about the integrity of the railway system and that Spaniards "deserve answers."

Spain's railway infrastructure manager Adif has repeatedly defended its maintenance regime and said it has always complied with safety requirements. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.