Toledo train crash toll reaches at least 64, Spain's transport minister cites erroneous restart after signalling failure

Since the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha first confirmed 10 deaths this morning, Oct. 28, the toll from the Renfe-Iryo collision near Urda has more than doubled from the 30 reported earlier. The regional government now says at least 64 people are dead, and officials expect the number to keep rising.

That makes it deadlier than the January crash near Adamuz, in Andalucía, which killed 45 people by the count of CNBC, NBC News and others. (The Guardian puts the January toll at 46.) It is still below the 2013 Santiago de Compostela derailment, which killed 80.

The injured count is still unsettled

The numbers on the injured do not match. Regional president Emiliano García-Page earlier said at least 80 people were hurt. The regional government later put the figure at 58, and Puente said 50.

Rescue crews are still searching the wreckage. Health Minister Mónica García said they are concentrating on the two most badly damaged carriages. Injured passengers are being sent to several hospitals in the area.

The two trains carried 544 people, according to the Castilla-La Mancha government: 397 on the Renfe service and 147 on the Iryo service. The Transport Ministry gave the Iryo figure as 146, including one baby.

What the transport minister says happened

Puente told reporters in Madrid that the control system at Urda failed because of a computer communications fault. The failure automatically stopped traffic, and six trains were held.

Puente said one of those trains was then allowed to restart and covered 25 kilometers before hitting the stationary Iryo train at high speed. The Renfe train was authorised to continue despite an active red signal, he said. He called the decision to restart it an error that broke protocol, and described how it happened as "inexplicable."

That is the account of a government minister, and the government runs the infrastructure manager, Adif. Adif is investigating the sequence of events. No formal investigative finding has been published.

A source told Reuters that the Iryo train stopped because of a signalling fault, on orders from Adif. Renfe said in a statement that its train had been told to continue and crashed into the Iryo train "for reasons we don't know."

Passenger Ignacio Relaño, who was on the Renfe train, told state broadcaster TVE it had stopped briefly, started again and then hit the Iryo train. "We all felt the train abruptly slowing down and then the impact," he said.

Service disruption and the political fallout

High-speed service between Madrid and Andalusia is suspended, with Ciudad Real also affected. Iryo has canceled all departures from Madrid-Puerta de Atocha on the Southern Corridor and has given no date for resuming service.

The crash comes with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez facing a snap election on Nov. 29, which he called after unrest over Spain's housing crisis. Sánchez said he was "shocked" and wrote that emergency services were working with all the administrations involved.

Santiago Abascal, leader of the Vox party, blamed the government on X. "Tragedy again. Rage again over the neglect, the ruin, and the betrayal suffered by the Spanish people," he wrote.

The government's position is that it has raised spending on railway network maintenance by 54% since taking power in 2018. After the January crash, the parties argued over whether the Socialist government had spent enough on maintenance.

Both crashes involved the same two operators on the Madrid-Andalusia line, the oldest on Spain's high-speed network.

Strike planned for Thursday

Spain's largest train drivers' union had already called a 24-hour work stoppage at Renfe for Thursday, Oct. 29, the day after the crash. The union said earlier this month: "Our goal is to change the system and make it safer." It also demanded "real and definitive technical solutions to the safety and reliability issues that have long plagued our rolling stock."

The union has also called a rolling six-day strike for drivers at the high-speed operator Ouigo.

Whether the Thursday stoppage goes ahead, and what Adif's investigation finds about the restart order at Urda, are the next open points. The final toll is still not set.