The third deadly train disaster in Spain in less than a year Oct. 28 left 69 people dead near Urda in Toledo province. The Spanish Railroad Engineers and Trainmen’s Union (SEMAF) held a one-day strike the next day, demanding the government implement safety measures agreed to many months earlier, but never carried out.
In the latest and deadliest disaster, a high-speed train operated by state-owned Renfe going 154 mph slammed into a stopped train on the same track operated by Italian-owned Iryo, on the Madrid to Seville line. Working people from Urda joined the relief effort, bringing blankets, food, water and medical supplies to the town’s sports hall, which was turned into a makeshift hospital for survivors.
Most of Spain’s high-speed rail network, the most extensive in the world outside China’s, has the same operating system as the rest of the European Union. But 63 miles of track on the Madrid-Seville line is operated under the outdated 30-year-old LZB system, which went down, bringing train traffic to a halt that day. Management then turned on an even older system, meant for operating trains at a slower speed.
For reasons that are not yet clear, train control told the Renfe crew they were cleared to move with no speed reduction. When the crew reported back that they still faced a red signal, they were told to ignore it and get going.
“The LZB system should have been replaced some time ago,” SEMAF spokesperson Diego Martín told The Associated Press. The union says the system, which is being phased out, consistently goes offline. Work to swap the cable-based LZB for the more modern radio-based European Rail Train Management System used across Europe was supposed to have been completed by 2024.
Transport Minister Óscar Puente sought to lay the blame for the crash on a worker in the train control center in Madrid, after audio from there was leaked to the press.
But the government is targeting someone “who is working under increasingly poor conditions,” Raquel Ayllón of SCF, the rail traffic controllers’ union, told AP. “Human error isn’t incomprehensible. What is incomprehensible is that the safety system is regularly failing.”
The Oct. 29 SEMAF strike by drivers at Renfe had been called in response to bosses’ refusal to carry out previous agreements over safety, including hiring more drivers, protection of drivers’ rest periods and an end to the company’s use of unsafe rolling stock. The union says it’s fighting to ensure “the urgency of keeping trains running is never placed above safety.”
Forty-seven people died in a high-speed train crash near Adamuz in Andalusia on the same rail line in January, as a result of cracks in the track. Rail workers went on strike, demanding greater government investment in maintenance and safety, more hiring, and guarantees that bosses would act on workers’ reports of dangerous conditions.
After the strike the government promised to invest an additional 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) in rail infrastructure by 2030.
Outrage among working people over the failure of the government to ensure the upkeep of the rail network is widespread. It comes in the wake of growing protests by workers and youth across Europe demanding relief from the worsening effects of today’s deepening capitalist crisis.
At least 70,000 people marched in Madrid and thousands more demonstrated in 50 other Spanish cities and towns Oct. 3, demanding lower rents and an end to evictions.
The protests were sparked by the eviction of wheelchair-bound María del Carmen Abascal from her home where she had lived for seven decades, after her landlords raised the rent. TV coverage of the eviction — with the 87-year-old being stretchered out of her apartment — was seen by millions. Protesters carried signs saying “Not even one more Maricarmen,” as Abascal is popularly known.
“I haven’t managed to defend my home, but I have fought so that others can learn to fight,” Abascal said in a video taken at her bedside in the hospital. She died Oct. 7.