Former Spanish minister Fátima Báñez killed in the collision of two high-speed trains near Toledo: she was travelling in the worst-hit carriage

The collision of two high-speed trains near Urda, in the province of Toledo, also took the life of former Spanish employment minister Fátima Báñez. She was 59. She was travelling on an Iryo train to Seville, where she was due to attend the Company Day, the annual gathering of the Spanish employers' organisation CEOE. The train collided with a Renfe train on the Madrid - Seville high-speed line, the first high-speed line Spain ever got, back in 1992.

For hours nobody knew what had happened to her. The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, said only what was certain: "What we know is that she was travelling in the most damaged carriage." The mayor of Seville, José Luis Sanz, urged caution - maybe she was injured, maybe she had lost her phone and couldn't call. The hope lasted until her body was found.

Báñez was born on January 6, 1967, in San Juan del Puerto, in the province of Huelva. She studied law and economics at Comillas University (ICADE) and had been an MP for Huelva since 2000. In December 2011 she became Minister of Employment and Social Security in Mariano Rajoy's government and stayed in the post for almost seven years. She led the 2012 labour law reform, and in 2016 she also ran the Health Ministry on an interim basis. Since December 2019 she had been president of the CEOE Foundation.

She is survived by her husband Jaime Alonso, who works in banking, and their two children.

We usually remember politicians for the laws they signed and the debates in parliament. Báñez died in the most ordinary of places - on a routine work trip, by train, on a line Spain has shown off for decades as a model of fast and safe transport. Now it's the investigators' turn: how did two trains collide on a high-speed line, and who is going to answer for it?