Nathan Shachar: The year's second major train tragedy is given as an election issue in Spain

The train accident in Andalusia in January, when 46 people died, was the result of extreme bad luck combined with worn rails. Wednesday's even bloodier crash south of Toledo appears to have been caused by stunning incompetence. As last winter, it was the Madrid-Sevilla express, operated by state-owned RENFE, that collided with a train from private Iryo.

Transport Minister Victor Puente, one of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's closest allies, claims, as he did in January, that all responsibility rests with Adif, the rail infrastructure authority – not with him. Opposition parties are calling for the minister's resignation, but it would be surprising if this happened, as it would be interpreted as the government taking the blame for the deteriorating condition of the railways - a month before the election.

On Wednesday morning, after the signaling system on the route malfunctioned, all affected trains were ordered to stop. So did the Madrid–Sevilla express. But soon after, traffic control at Atocha, Madrid's central station, gave the Seville train the go-ahead to continue, despite the fact that the fault had not been fixed and despite the fact that other trains were standing still on the single-track track. When the express train ran into the Iryo company's stationary train, it was traveling at over 200 kilometers per hour.

The Spanish high-speed train network is in many respects a success, with over 400 miles of rails. The system, AVE, has been sold to Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and the United States (Houston–Dallas line). Wednesday's accident, like the one in January, took place along the very first AVE stretch, which was inaugurated in 1992 before the World Exhibition in Seville and the Olympic Games in Barcelona. The comfort and speed were staggering compared to previous Spanish trains.

The new network was largely paid for with EU money, at a time when Spain was the Union's major beneficiary. Since then, politicians have launched new super trains with great fanfare, but have been less willing to put resources into day-to-day maintenance.

In recent years, when a growing part of the traffic has been privatized and Spain has been without a state budget for political reasons, the number of incidents has tripled - while the number of departures has steadily increased. A Spanish railway employee told DN after the accident in January:

- Since 2019, the number of passengers has increased by nearly seventy percent. At the same time, investments per passenger have decreased by 30 percent. Only 20 percent of the money the government spends on the railways goes to maintenance.