Madrid, Spain – Joaquim Torres, who was travelling on a train which crashed into another on Wednesday, rushed to help his fellow passengers who had been injured.
Fighting back tears, he told Al Jazeera: “I held this woman in my arms and tried to comfort her, but she stopped breathing. She died, she died.”
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One of about 500 passengers caught in the deadly crash, Torres had been travelling on a high-speed train from the capital, Madrid, to Seville in the south of the country. All seemed normal, until the huge crash just before 9am.
At least 68 people were killed and 77 others were injured.
Spain’s national train operator Renfe has launched an investigation into the disaster, which happened in a rural area between Urda and Los Yebenes, two small towns south of Toledo in central Spain.
But the disaster has renewed a national debate over whether Spain’s high-speed train network is safe, nine months after another train crash on the same line in which 46 people died and scores were injured at Adamuz, near Cordoba in southern Spain.
‘Apocalyptic’
Sebastian Herrero, a 46-year-old doctor who was on the train, described the scene after Wednesday’s collision.
“There were three train carriages from which they kept pulling people out and covering them with sheets. Bodies. It’s apocalyptic. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could still be alive in those three carriages. It’s a twisted mass of metal. It’s as if a bomb had gone off,” he told Al Jazeera.
Rescuers searched for survivors through the mangled wreckage of three carriages at the front of the train, which had smashed into a stationary locomotive.
Desperate relatives were waiting at Seville train station holding pictures of loved ones who had failed to arrive in the southern city, as Spanish TV presenters, dressed in black, reported on the tragedy.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who has declared three days of national mourning, said: “All of Spain is mourning,” before adding that it is “not acceptable for a country like Spain” to have two major train disasters in one year. A judicial investigation is expected to begin shortly.
Train followed ‘inexplicable’ order
Spain’s Transport Minister Oscar Puente said the deadly crash happened after a Renfe train was authorised to continue on its journey – despite an active red signal because of a stationary train on the line ahead, operated by the Italian consortium Iryo.
Puente said the red signal had been issued due to a computer communications failure which automatically stopped traffic, and an “inexplicable” order from the central command centre was given for the Renfe train to move on. He said train engineers were not to blame.
The trade union Solidarity, which is linked to Spain’s far-right Vox party, held a demonstration in Madrid on Wednesday night to demand Puente’s resignation, and riot police were dispatched.
In the wake of the crash, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, leader of the opposition conservative People’s Party, which is favourite to win the upcoming general election, told reporters: “Spain has the right to know what is happening with its infrastructure, the condition of the tracks and safety systems, what warnings were received from Adamuz and measures were taken.
“The Spanish people have a right to a complete and independent review of the entire rail network.”
‘Seats were flying through the air’
Fernando Seco, another passenger in the Renfe train bound for Seville, said the train had just resumed its journey following a brief stop when it collided with the other train.
“We felt a brutal crash. People were thrown through the air, seats were flying through the air,” he told TVE state television.
After leaving the wrecked train, he said he saw a “carriage split in half, with dead people trapped inside”.
Once news of the crash got out, volunteers rushed to the scene to offer whatever help they could give.
Jose Maria Rabadan, a resident of Urda, the closest town, said he and other volunteers brought food, water and blankets and provided transport for those affected by the crash.
“Whatever they ask of us, we will bring,” he told Radio Castilla-La Mancha.
The rail accident is likely to come as a major blow to the ruling Socialist Party, just a month before the country goes to the polls in a general election on November 29.
The government’s management of another rail crash in January was heavily criticised by opposition politicians and raised questions about the levels of investment in railway maintenance in recent years.
Rail unions had planned a strike for Thursday to protest about what they say is a poor safety record on the Spanish network.
The tragedy also comes amid a boom in the use of high-speed trains, which has not been accompanied by necessary investment in maintenance of the high-speed network, according to European Commission data.
The number of rail accidents, including collisions and derailments, rose from 45 in 2016 to 57 in 2024, and surged to 69 in 2025, according to the Spanish railway safety authority (AESF).
Some 40 million people used the high-speed rail trains in 2024, almost double the figure for 2019. However, in the first half of this year, about 25 million travelled on the high-speed network, a year-on-year fall of 14 percent.
With cheaper fares compared with many other developed countries, the high-speed rail network has been seen as an achievement for Spain in recent years, with its expertise exported to Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.
Between 2018 and 2022, Spain spent an average of about $1.67bn each year on high-speed lines, more than other countries with similar networks. However, only 16 percent of that was spent on maintenance or repairs, with the rest going on infrastructure, according to EC figures.
A safety risk
By contrast, Italy, Germany and France spent on average between 33 and 39 percent of their budgets on maintenance, even though each country has much smaller networks than the 4,000km (2,485 miles) in Spain.
Experts say the success of the Spanish high-speed network is putting safety at risk.
“The problem is that the train network has become very popular as it is cheap and accessible but the authorities have not spent enough on its maintenance in recent years,” Salvador Garcia-Ayllon, a professor at the Universidad Politecnica in Cartagena, who specialises in civil engineering, told Al Jazeera.
Following the Adamuz disaster, a preliminary investigation found a rail fracture was the cause of the crash, but an ongoing investigation by police has not been concluded. A judicial investigation is now expected.
