Spain train crash survivors demand safety action after Urda disaster

Survivors of Spain's three worst rail disasters have urged the country to invest more in rail safety after at least 69 people were killed when two trains collided near Urda, a town close to Toledo in central Spain, on Wednesday.

Only 10 months earlier, two trains collided on the same Madrid-Seville line at Adamuz, near Cordoba in southern Spain, killing 46 people. Spain's deadliest rail disaster remains the 2013 crash at Angrois, near Santiago de Compostela in the northwest, where 80 people died after a high-speed train travelling at 200km/h (125mph) left the track on a stretch with an 80km/h (50mph) limit.

'They will keep happening if we do not act'

Cristobal Gonzalez, who was injured at Angrois and still lives with post-traumatic stress, told Al Jazeera the crashes had different causes but pointed to the same conclusion. "Now we have seen three dreadful crashes in Spain, at Angrois, Adamuz and Urda. They will keep happening if we do not act," he said, adding that Angrois involved speeding, Adamuz was blamed on a track problem and Urda may have involved human error and a fault in the control system.

Gonzalez, who was in the front carriage when the train "flew" off the tracks into a bank, said he stayed on board to help others in their final moments and still struggles to describe the events of that day.

Santiago Rosendo, a passenger on the Renfe train involved in the Adamuz crash in January, described the "panic" when the trains collided. "There was a sudden stop – a very sudden stop – then following that, a loud crash... 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. "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.

Maintenance spending

Between 2018 and 2022, Spain spent an average of about $1.67bn a year on high-speed lines, more than other European countries with similar networks, but only 16 percent went on maintenance or repairs, according to European Commission data. Italy, Germany and France spent between 33 and 39 percent of their budgets on maintenance, despite having smaller networks than Spain's 4,000km (2,485 miles).

Jose Maria Goicolea, spokesman for the Spanish Association of Civil Engineers, told Al Jazeera that with growing use of the network "there has to be more spent on maintenance", and that the emphasis "cannot be only on building new lines".

An ageing control system

The Madrid-Seville line is the only one in Spain using a German-made LZB control system dating from the 1970s, which is being phased out. Goicolea said he would close the line while the system is phased out, adding that LZB failed in Wednesday's crash but human error appeared to be another cause.

Ramiro Aupin Lopera, an infrastructure expert who lectured at the University Politecnica de Catalunya, told Al Jazeera there had been a "ridiculous" fall in maintenance investment since 2011, after the financial crisis. "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," he said.

Besides state-run Renfe, Spain has two private operators, France's Ouigo and Iryo, part of an Italian consortium, which have voiced concern about the LZB system. Diego Martin, of the train drivers' union SEMAF, said blaming rail workers would not prevent future crashes: "Blame does not prevent accidents; identifying and determining the causes does."

Source: Al Jazeera.