In the morning of October 28, 2026, under Spanish Toledo, a high‑speed AVE train at full speed collided with the tail of an Iryo train that had stopped on the tracks. The crash killed 69 people, making the disaster near the village of Urda the worst railway accident in Europe in the last decade. For Spain, it is already the third fatal rail incident in a year and the second major collision of express trains on the southern “Seville” line. Earlier, in January, a similar accident in Adamuza near Cordoba claimed the lives of 46 passengers. The series of tragedies dealt a severe blow to the reputation of the local high‑speed network, which had traditionally been regarded as a benchmark of reliability and technological progress, a source of pride for local transport officials. Official investigations into the crash near Toledo have only just begun, but experts agree that the cause was most likely a complex failure. The multi‑layered automatic safety system, designed to completely eliminate the influence of human error on high‑speed lines, failed at the critical moment.

Minutes before the disaster

About half past eight in the morning on the Madrid‑Seville high‑speed line (VSM) the LZB signalling system was completely shut down. This German automatic protection technology continuously transmits to the cab data about clear track sections and regulates speed, allowing trains to safely accelerate to the standard 300 km/h. Without electronic guidance, drivers effectively lose control of the track situation, so the trains on the affected section were forced to stop, including the private Iryo express and the following state AVE. According to conversation logs published by the news agency EFE, the ADIF dispatch centre (the state railway infrastructure operator) at Madrid’s Atocha station ordered the AVE driver to reboot the on‑board computer and continue moving under the control of ground signals. This backup mode is provided for in the regulations, but it strictly requires the train to operate at a “visual” speed of no more than 40 km/h, guaranteeing a full stop before any sudden obstacle.

A few minutes later, the driver of the stationary Iryo train informed the dispatchers that her train was still blocked before the entrance signal at Urda station, and the automation was still “dead.”

The central post received this information, but the following AVE train was not warned about it for some reason. Moreover, the onboard electronics of the AVE also signaled that the upcoming section of track was occupied, but the driver still received a repeated verbal permission from the dispatcher to proceed at a "normal pace". In 17 minutes, the AVE gained a speed of about 200 kilometers per hour and, at full speed, rammed into the tail of the stationary Iryo train. From the terrible impact, almost all the Iryo cars derailed, with the last three collapsing down the embankment. The interim report of the investigators points to a fatal chain of incorrect commands and technical failures that completely canceled the multi-level protection of the line. The main question of the investigation is how and why the dispatch service directed one high-speed express onto a path already occupied by another.

First accidents of the year

Before looking for the reasons for the catastrophic failure near Toledo, it is worth recalling that the tragedy in Urda was far from the first systemic failure of the year that led to such severe consequences. On January 18, 2026, in Andalusia, near the city of Adamuz, a high-speed Iryo train derailed, after which its cars were thrown onto neighboring tracks directly under the oncoming Alvia train of the state-owned company Renfe. The disaster claimed the lives of 46 people. The accident occurred on the same oldest high-speed line in the country, Madrid - Seville. The paradox of the situation was that this accident-prone section had just undergone a large-scale comprehensive reconstruction worth €700 million. The Commission for the Investigation of Railway Accidents (CIAF) linked the January crash to the sudden destruction of the rail at a welded joint, completely excluding technical malfunctions in the trains themselves. Such a defect is impossible to spot from the locomotive cab, although, according to expert opinions, the critical crack formed on the tracks almost a day before the crash.

As the Reuters agency found out, back in August, the train drivers' union SEMAF sent an official letter to the ADIF management, warning of the critical wear of the Seville highway.

During the investigation, CIAF auditors also discovered serious discrepancies in the supervisory documents on the quality of welding provided by the auditing company AYESA. The rail supplier, the metal giant ArcelorMittal, refused to comment, promising to answer investigators' questions only after the publication of the final report.

Just two days after the tragedy in Adamus, a similar train derailment occurred in Gelida near Barcelona, claiming the life of another person, an assistant driver. And although the nature of these incidents is different, they are united by a common detail. The high-tech automatic protection barriers did not work in either case, despite the astronomical budgets spent and numerous warnings received.

The catastrophe under Adamus

Three barriers

In normal mode, safety on Spanish high-speed rail is ensured by three independent barriers. The first and most advanced level is the digital LZB system, which continuously calculates the distance to the train ahead and blocks any speed excess. In the event of an electronics failure, the movement is transferred to lateral signaling via ground-based traffic lights. At this point, the second layer is activated in the form of a semi-automatic ASFA system. Its ground sensors read the track markers and forcibly engage emergency braking if the train tries to pass a red light. The final line of defense is the dispatcher of the control center, who tracks the position of trains on an interactive map. If we translate this scheme into automotive language, it looks like a combination of adaptive cruise control, automatic braking system, and road patrol. When the automation is functioning properly, a collision of trains on the same track is excluded.

During the crash near Toledo, all three barriers failed consecutively.

After a computer failure and the shutdown of LZB, the dispatch service in Madrid took control, but instead of switching the line to a safe manual mode with a speed of up to 40 km/h, it issued a verbal command to proceed at full speed. The head of the Ministry of Transport, Oscar Puente, later called this order inexplicable, since the standing Iryo train was clearly visible on the monitor screens. Why the locomotive barrier ASFA, installed on both trains, did not work at that moment is something the investigation will have to determine after deciphering the black boxes. However, experts are already calling the main vulnerability of the network. In emergency situations, automatic algorithms are disabled, and all responsibility is shifted to the people working in emergency mode.

The electronics from the nineties

The LZB electronics on the Madrid-Seville line have been in continuous operation since 1992. For a computer system, three decades is a respectable age. The aging German complex was planned to be fully replaced with the modern European radio standard ERTMS of the second level, getting rid of the vulnerable cables in the track bed. On other high-speed routes in the kingdom, this technology has been working for a long time, but on the oldest southern route, the official deadline for the update, scheduled for April 2026, was disrupted due to prolonged bureaucratic disputes during government procurement. Just three weeks before the tragedy in Toledo, the general director of the private carrier Iryo, Fabrizio Favara, stated in the Senate that regular system failures of LZB would paralyze his trains on the sections for a long time. The head openly called such automation safe but hopelessly outdated.

The problem was known, it was repeated, but people got used to it.

In sociology, this phenomenon is called the normalization of deviations. The term was introduced after the investigation into the crash of the American shuttle Challenger, when technical malfunctions that did not lead to an immediate catastrophe began to be perceived by personnel over time as an acceptable work routine. On the Spanish railway, regular emergency stops of express trains due to signal loss also became commonplace, and safety regulations were carried out by drivers and dispatchers mechanically. Experience shows that a prolonged transition period, during which old analog equipment is forcibly combined with new digital protocols, proves to be much more dangerous than the operation of either system separately. The use of temporary schemes and constant work at the intersection of two different technologies blurs people's concentration.

The track equipped with the LZB system

The Reazon model

In the event of a complete failure of automation, control of movement inevitably switches to manual mode, so the first official version of the investigation after the catastrophe last week predictably touched on the human factor. A member of the Association of Railway Engineers, Ramiro Aurin, immediately named the operator's error as the key cause of the tragedy. On recordings of conversations leaked to the press, it can be heard that the dispatch center in Atocha was critically overloaded. Several employees were speaking at the same time, trying to manage multiple trains stuck due to a power outage of the LZB system, and the duty operator, mechanically reading out verbal instructions, could easily have mixed up lines in a complex regulatory table of regulations.

However, the dispatcher turned out to be only the last link in a long chain of fatal failures.

British psychologist James Rison once compared a multilayered safety system to slices of Swiss cheese. The catastrophe occurs only when random holes in several layers of protection suddenly align, forming a through‑cut “gap.” At the time of the dispatcher’s error during the crash near Toledo, two preceding technological barriers had already been completely removed. Interestingly, an hour before the tragedy another engineer, having received from Madrid the same incorrect order to go “full speed,” corrected the dispatcher in time and independently reduced the speed to the prescribed 40 km/h. A person can indeed become the last line of defense, but building safety for high‑speed transport on that alone is categorically wrong. It is advantageous to lay all the blame on a particular employee, because in the case of negligence there is always a specific name and position. But worn infrastructure, missed modernization deadlines, and collective acclimatization to systemic failures have no surnames, even though it is they that turn a one‑second lapse into a tragedy with dozens of victims.

Protection Against Foolishness

The absurdity of the situation lies in the fact that modern transport is designed with precision to the contrary. Engineers originally design railways so as to minimize any manifestations of human will. In the technical environment this algorithm is rigidly fixed in the fail‑safe concept, requiring that in the event of any digital or mechanical failure the system automatically transition to the safest possible state. A traffic light must turn red when a cable is cut, and a high‑speed express must immediately activate emergency braking when communication is lost. The entire classic idea of railway block sections rests on the fact that on a given stretch of track physically no more than one train can be present. Such “protection against foolishness” is intended to block personnel actions in emergency mode, that is, to physically prevent a person from committing a mistake.

However, during the “jam” near Toledo, the safe state of the automation proved too inconvenient for the dispatchers.

Movement in the southern direction is completely paralyzed, the timetable of flagship express trains collapsed, which put enormous psychological pressure on the central post in Madrid. In such moments operators inevitably face the dangerous temptation to trade absolute safety for immediate efficiency, because launching trains blindly seems a simpler solution than “freezing” a transport system worth tens of billions of euros for hours. The standard rule of “visibility” movement is designed for the driver’s quick reaction, but due to the complex terrain, the view from the locomotive cab rarely exceeds 400 meters. At the same time, a heavy AVE train traveling at 200 km/h would need at least a kilometer and a half of track to come to a complete stop. By granting permission to accelerate under conditions of disabled automation, the dispatch service effectively entrusted the lives of hundreds of passengers solely to the memory and attentiveness of a tired employee.

Speed as a political project

The technological deadlock, in which the safety of hundreds of passengers suddenly comes to depend on the attentiveness of a single person, did not arise yesterday. Its root cause lies in a fundamental financial imbalance. Over forty years, Spain built the largest high‑speed network in Europe and the second largest in the world after China, spanning about 4,000 kilometers. According to the European Commission, from 2018 to 2022 Madrid poured an average of €1.5 billion per year into this infrastructure, more than any other EU country. The problem was that only about 16 % of that enormous sum went toward maintaining the infrastructure, timely updates, and modernization of protective systems. All the rest was absorbed by endless construction of new lines. Brussels generously subsidized the lion’s share of these projects.

According to reports from the European Court of Auditors, Spain took almost half of all the EU’s sectoral grants, more than €11 billion.

European auditors have long noted that decisions to expand the railway network were often made by local authorities for political reasons, while calculations of real profitability remained a mere formality. For example, the section from Vents de Banys to León was initially deemed economically unviable, yet it was still put into operation. Meanwhile, the load on the in-demand main lines grew avalanche‑like. In 2025, a record 44.5 million passengers used high‑speed trains in the country.