Survivors of Spain’s worst train crashes urge action after latest disaster

Madrid, Spain – “I survived but the mental scars are still there all these years later. We must stop more accidents happening,” says Cristobal Gonalez.

Gonzalez suffered multiple injuries when a high-speed train, which should have been travelling at 80 kilometres per hour (50 miles per hour), hurtled off the line at 200km/h (125mph), killing 80 people.

The accident in 2013 at Angrois, near Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, remains Spain’s deadliest rail crash.

On Wednesday, 13 years later, at least 69 people were killed when two trains collided near Urda, a town close to Toledo in central Spain. Only 10 months earlier, two other trains collided on the same line, in Adamuz near Cordoba in southern Spain, killing 46 people.

Survivors of Spain’s three worst rail disasters have said more must be done to avoid further tragedies.

“Now we have seen three dreadful crashes in Spain, at Angrois, Adamuz and Urda. They will keep happening if we do not act,” Gonzalez told Al Jazeera.

“At Angrois, the driver was going too fast; at Adamuz, an investigation said there was a problem on the track; and at Urda it might have been human error and a problem with the control system. Whatever, we must stop these crashes happening by investing more in safety.”

Gonzalez was travelling with a friend, Oscar, to Santiago de Compostela when the crash happened. He was in the front carriage when the train “flew” off the tracks and smashed into a bank.

He stayed inside the train trying to help others in their last moments. Years later, he struggles to talk about the events of that day.

“I will keep what happened to myself. It is very hard to share it, even if I wanted to – it is something that defies imagination,” said Gonzalez, who suffers from post-traumatic stress.

‘I cannot believe that this has happened again’

Santiago Rosendo, who was one of the passengers in the Renfe train involved in the Adamuz crash in January, spoke of the “panic” among passengers when the trains collided.

“There was a sudden stop – a very sudden stop – then following that, a loud crash. Then the train moved from side to side until the train slid onto its side and we were left entirely in the dark. The first thing I saw when I got off the train was a body,” he told Al Jazeera.

Rosendo, who was travelling on his own from Madrid to Huelva in southern Spain when the accident happened on a Sunday night, added: “I cannot believe that this has happened again on the same line. We have to do something.”

An initial investigation into the Adamuz crash found a broken rail had caused one train to veer off the line into the path of an oncoming train.

Experts have called for more investment in maintenance in the wake of this year’s crashes.

Between 2018 and 2022, Spain spent an average of about $1.67bn each year on high-speed lines, more than other European countries with similar networks. However, only 16 percent of that was spent on maintenance or repairs, according to European Commission data; the rest was devoted to the infrastructure.

In contrast, Italy, Germany and France spent an average of between 33 and 39 percent of their budgets on maintenance, even though each has smaller networks than the 4,000km (2,485 miles) in Spain.

Experts call for investment in maintenance

Jose Maria Goicolea, spokesman for the Spanish Association of Civil Engineers, told Al Jazeera that with the increase in use of the rail network, “there has to be more spent on maintenance.

“In 1982, when there was the first line, it was a very small network. Now it is much bigger with much more usage. It is a whole new ball game now. The emphasis cannot be only on building new lines but doing more maintenance.”

About 40 million people used the high-speed rail trains in 2024, almost double the figure for 2019. In the first half of this year, about 25 million travelled on the high-speed network, a year-on-year fall of 14 percent.

The line between Madrid and Seville, where both crashes happened this year, is the only one in Spain using a German-made LZB control system dating from the 1970s, which is being phased out.

“I would close the line between Madrid and Seville while the LZB system is phased out. It was only partly responsible for Wednesday’s crash. It failed. But the other reason was human error, it seems,” Goicolea said. “However, this is up to the politicians, not me.”

He added that the crash in January was caused by faults in the line.

Ramiro Aupin Lopera, an expert in infrastructure who lectured at the University Politecnica de Catalunya, said that since 2011, in the wake of the financial crisis, there had been a “ridiculous” fall in investment in maintenance on the Spanish high-speed railway network.

“At the same time that there has been growing use of the network, there has been less investment in maintenance. It is no surprise that we have had two crashes in less than a year. It may come from ignorance or disdain towards science and infrastructure on the part of the politicians,” he told Al Jazeera.

Apart from the state-run Renfe, Spain has two private operators, Ouigo from France and Iryo, which is part of an Italian consortium. They have voiced concern over the LZB system.

Helen Venezuela, then director of Ouigo Espana, told Spanish radio Cadena Ser last year: “This line (Madrid-Seville) is equipped with an obsolete system like LZB. It is like watching Netflix in black and white. We are Netflix and the system is still in black and white.”

Diego Martin, of SEMAF, the Spanish train drivers’ union, said blaming rail workers for the latest disaster would not prevent future crashes.

“Blame does not prevent accidents; identifying and determining the causes does,” he said.