Rail Tragedy in Spain: 68 Dead, and the Control Centre Ordered the Trains to Move With No Speed Limit

Spain is in three days of national mourning. At least 68 people have died, dozens are injured, and many of the victims have still not been identified. It is one of the worst rail disasters in modern European history and the deadliest in Spain since 2013, when 80 people died near Santiago de Compostela.

On Wednesday morning, a high-speed train on the Madrid - Seville line slammed from behind into a train standing on the track. The stationary train, run by private operator Iryo with 147 passengers on board, had stopped because of a computer system failure. It was hit by a train run by state operator Renfe carrying 397 passengers. Several carriages came off the embankment, and one caught fire. Rescuers spent the whole night cutting through metal under floodlights, searching for survivors.

The key to the story is one decision. Transport Minister Óscar Puente explained that when the system fails, control passes to the duty control centre in Madrid, which runs around the clock. That very centre, according to the minister, made an "incomprehensible" decision: it sent the trains an instruction to start moving again, with no speed restriction whatsoever. Audio recordings of the conversations between dispatchers and drivers show the same thing - the high-speed train got a green light even though the train in front of it was standing broken down.

When a minister himself calls what a service under his own responsibility did "incomprehensible", the question stops being a technical one. Who will answer for it? Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said it was "unacceptable" for Spain to suffer two major rail disasters in a single year. In January, near Córdoba, on the same line but much further south, 46 people died. Two catastrophes on the line to Seville in one year.

That night around 1,500 people gathered outside the Transport Ministry in Madrid, demanding the resignations of Sánchez and Puente. Police used tear gas after protesters began throwing bottles and flares; according to reports, no one was injured or arrested. Train drivers announced a strike for Thursday, "in defence of railway safety". "Spain has the right to know what is happening to its infrastructure," said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the opposition People's Party.

Most parties immediately suspended their election campaigns. The exception is Vox, whose leader Santiago Abascal said he would not take part in what he called an attempt "to use mourning to silence criticism" of the state of the railways. The Balkans know this scene by heart: after the canopy collapse in Novi Sad, which killed 16 people, the question "who is responsible" grew into a movement that ended up changing the government in Serbia.

The Civil Guard has opened offices in Madrid, Toledo, Seville and Córdoba to register the missing and is taking DNA samples to find the families. Flags on the buildings of the European institutions in Brussels are at half-mast. The families will get the names of their loved ones. Will they also get the name of whoever gave the green light?