A deadly high-speed train collision near Toledo has added a major crisis to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s election campaign, with voting only weeks away. BBC World reported on October 31 that 69 bodies had been recovered, nine months after another rail crash near Córdoba killed 46 people.
The latest investigation has only just begun. Transport Minister Oscar Puente has nevertheless focused attention on mistakes by railway staff, while the opposition People’s Party has demanded his resignation. He has refused, saying his responsibility is to remain in office and improve the system.
In Puente’s account, a controller authorised a stopped train to proceed at up to 160km/h despite another train being stranded ahead. He said control-centre screens were working and showed the danger, but the moving train received no instruction to stop.
Puente also disputed claims of inadequate infrastructure spending. He said Spain’s LZB signalling safety system had failed 170 times this year, describing that frequency as normal and around the European Union average. Those assertions do not settle the cause of the collision.
Sánchez entered the campaign facing discontent over housing costs and corruption allegations involving close relatives, which they deny. The BBC reported that recent polls already favoured a government formed by the centre-right People’s Party and far-right Vox; that remains a prospective outcome, not an election result.
Ipsos pollster Paco Camas told the BBC that repeated rail disasters could undermine trust in public institutions as well as train travel. The January crash near Córdoba also remains under investigation, with preliminary reports pointing to a possible rail crack rather than the sequence described by Puente in Toledo.