The investigation into the train collision in Urda, Toledo, points to a successive collapse of three layers of safety that made the collision on Wednesday between a Renfe AVE and an Iryo train stopped on the track unavoidable, an incident that on Thursday raised the death toll to 69 fatalities after one of the injured passed away in the Hospital de Ciudad Real.
The accident, which occurred at 8:54 at kilometer point 117.8 of the Madrid-Seville high-speed line, is now the deadliest in Spain since the Angrois tragedy in 2013 and the second on the same line in less than a year, with a combined toll exceeding 100 dead along with the one in Adamuz, which occurred in January.
Everything began at 8:30 when a communication failure between three computers took the LZB signaling system offline over a stretch of approximately 63 kilometers, affecting at least six trains simultaneously.
That first failure, although unusual for its magnitude, has established protocols: the train operators must stop, and the Regulation and Control Center (CRC) of Adif must coordinate the resumption of travel in degraded mode, with speed limited to 40 kilometers per hour.
It was precisely that protocol that was not followed, resulting in the second failure.
At 8:36, the CRC ordered Renfe's AVE to resume its operation "normally," without imposing the speed restriction required by regulations when the automatic system is not functioning.
Meanwhile, the driver of the Iryo train, stopped less than 30 kilometers ahead, informed the control center that her train could not restart the LZB: "The train is not allowing me to restart the LZB system, that's why I am still stopped at the entrance signal," she said according to the audio recordings of the conversations with the CRC.
The operator's response was: "When you can, and if you have issues, just give us a call."
The AVE was already moving at normal speed—possibly up to 200 kilometers per hour—while the Iryo remained stationary on the tracks.
The third failure was the absence of any warning to the AVE driver about the presence of the train stopped on their route.
The impact derailed four cars, two of which fell off an embankment, with 397 passengers aboard the AVE and 147 on the Iryo.
The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, described the decision of the CRC operator as "inexplicable" and acknowledged that actions were taken "against regulations".
The Civil Guard interrogated the worker who authorized the departure of the AVE that same Wednesday, as well as the rest of the shift.
Iryo, for its part, contradicted the initial version of the Government and denied that its driver had ever received an order to resume movement.
The judicial investigation fell under the jurisdiction of the Instruction Court number 2 of Orgaz, while the technical aspects are handled by the Railway Accident Investigation Commission (CIAF).
The spotlight is also on the obsolescence of the LZB system, which has been in place since the line's inauguration in 1992, and which Puente himself acknowledged on Thursday as an "old" system.
The contract to replace it with the modern European standard ERTMS was awarded to Thales España in September 2021 for 93.8 million euros, with a term of 52 months that was set to expire in January 2026, but the upgrade was not operational when the accident occurred.
A train operator consulted by El Mundo summarized the anomaly of the initial failure: "A breakdown over such an extensive section affecting so many trains is not normal."
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