Renfe has decided to erect its own firewall against the orders that its drivers receive from the Adif control center when the security system fails. Just a few hours after proclaiming that none of the accidents in Adamuz and Urda are attributable to the operator and that the infrastructure is the responsibility of Adif, the public company Renfe launches this Sunday a slogan that forces its drivers to demand additional checks before resuming travel after certain failures of the LZB system. The message that both decisions convey is eloquent: for Renfe, an authorization from Adif is no longer enough on its own to get things started.
Instruction CR-V 32/2026, signed on October 31 and in force as of today, to which EL MUNDO has had access, is titled Action against transmission losses in LZB. It establishes how a Renfe driver should proceed when the system that supervises circulation on the Madrid-Seville high-speed train stops transmitting information and a partial blockage occurs, as happened on Wednesday in Urda and as, according to the minister, has happened on other 170 occasions so far this year. According to these new instructions, the driver must stop and will not be able to start until receiving the LZB3 telephone message, which requires "sight driving" and a maximum of 40 kilometers per hour.
It is not an innocent precision. At 8:36 a.m. on Wednesday, when the LZB had been out of service for a few minutes, Adif ordered the driver of AVE 2080 to "disconnect and reconnect the LZB and resume operation under the protection of the BSL with normal operation", that is, the LZB4 telephone system, instead of LZB3. The driver had reported a “goal zero” situation. 17 minutes later, his train hit the immobilized Iryo in Urda (Toledo). At least 69 people died.
Renfe now wants to close that possibility for its drivers in cases of partial blockade. The instruction specifies that the LZB3 is the "only valid telephone number" to restart driving and prohibits pressing the "Pass" button before receiving it. It adds that 40 kilometers per hour cannot be exceeded until the indicated sign is passed, even if a previous one shows a more favorable indication. And it establishes one more requirement: before accepting the authorization, the driver must ask Adif for confirmation that in the blocking block (the section protected between signals) there is no other train besides his own.
In other words, Renfe asks its drivers not to resume driving if they do not have an order to do so under the LZB3, at 40 kilometers per hour and to carry out a second check from the cabin in case that is not the order that comes to them from the Adif control center. Basically it is what should have been applied in Urda, but Renfe now leaves it in writing, assuming that Adif's orders may not always be correct.
In Urda, the AVE started moving again while the Iryo remained stopped about 25 kilometers ahead. After the LZB fell on a 63-kilometer stretch, communication between controllers and drivers was an essential safety barrier. The AVE caught up with the other convoy at a speed provisionally estimated between 160 and 200 kilometers per hour.
The instructions do not always order driving at 40 for any drop in the LZB. It distinguishes partial blocking, identified with target speed 000, from the so-called total blocking, with goal 040. In the latter case, it plans to initially reduce the speed below 80 or 60 kilometers per hour, depending on braking, and continue under the lateral signaling block. In the first, however, it leaves no room for authorization for "normal operation." Also remember that the LZB3 does not allow you to cross any stop signs.
The operational turn comes accompanied by another in the field of responsibilities. In a press release issued on Saturday, Renfe maintained that "none of the two recent railway accidents are attributable to Renfe" and that relating them to deficiencies in its trains or its organization "makes no sense." He also recalled that "the tasks of maintenance, conservation and management of the railway infrastructure do not correspond to the railway operator." That is, it marked distances with Adif's scope of responsibility, although there are still no definitive conclusions about Urda.
The new instruction from Renfe comes at a time of maximum tension after the serious accident in Urda, especially for Adif, ultimately responsible for the proper functioning of the LZB system, its subsequent security layers and, ultimately, also for the good work of its controllers. Minister Oscar Puente has pointed to the control center from the first moment, however, he has decided to keep the president of Adif, Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña, and the entire leadership of the manager in his position for the moment, renewed by himself a year and a half ago and with a great weight of profiles related to the PSOE. None of them resigned or were fired after the Adamuz accident last January.
Renfe, chaired by Álvaro Fernández Heredia, Minister Puente's most trusted, does not openly put in writing in the instruction that is in force today that its standards are above those of the railway administrator. But it does set a practical limit to what its drivers can accept from the control center: neither departure with normal operation after a partial blockage nor start without confirming that the block is free. Part of these precautions already appeared in the regulations. That Renfe considers it necessary to reiterate and reinforce them four days after Urda illustrates the extent to which confidence in the safety barriers that were supposed to prevent the crash has been damaged.
