What happened near Toledo

At least 64 people died on Wednesday morning when two trains collided on the Madrid–Andalusia high-speed line, derailing several carriages. Officials said the two trains together were carrying 544 passengers when the crash happened.

According to a source who spoke to Reuters, an Iryo train operated by the private company had come to a halt near the city of Toledo because of a signalling fault, acting on orders from the infrastructure manager Adif. A train operated by state-owned Renfe, travelling on the same line at high speed, then struck the stationary train.

Renfe said in a statement that its train had been instructed to continue on its way and had crashed into the stationary Iryo train "for reasons it did not know".

Second disaster on the same line

The collision is the second fatal crash on the network in nine months. In January, 46 people were killed and dozens more injured in a crash near the town of Adamuz in Andalucía. Both accidents involved the same train operators and took place on the line connecting Madrid to Andalusia, the oldest on Spain's high-speed rail system.

The first crash sparked a wider conversation over safety on the line, a debate that rail unions say has continued.

Key points from the two crashes:

• •At least 64 people died in Wednesday's collision near Toledo, from 544 passengers on board the two trains.
• •The January crash near Adamuz killed 46 people and left dozens more injured.
• •Both crashes involved the same operators on the Madrid–Andalusia line.

Strike called days before the crash

The disaster came a day before a planned 24-hour work stoppage at Renfe by Spain's largest train drivers union. Earlier this month the union said: "Our goal is to change the system and make it safer."

Its demands included reliable and safe trains and real, definitive technical solutions to the safety and reliability problems that have long affected the country's rolling stock. The reasons for taking action also ranged from the need for climate emergency protocols to ensuring channels of communication for workers to raise concerns. The union has additionally called a rolling, six-day strike for drivers at the high-speed operator Ouigo.

Spending and safety record in question

The January crash triggered political disputes over whether Pedro Sánchez's Socialist government had spent enough on railway maintenance. The figures at the centre of that argument include:

• •The government says it has increased spending on railway network maintenance by 54% since taking power in 2018.
• •Spain spent the most of any country on its high-speed network from 2018 to 2022, averaging about €1.5bn (£1.26bn) a year, according to a Reuters analysis of EU data.
• •More than 90% of Spain's train network has the highest level of safety control systems in the EU.
• •About 16% of funding has been earmarked for maintenance, renewal and upgrades, with much directed at new infrastructure.

Train travel accounts for about 57% of all transport in Spain and grew by 40% from 2019 to 2024, a period in which the network opened up to private companies. In the first half of this year, 25 million passengers used a high-speed train in the country.

European Commission data suggests maintenance investment in Spain's 4,000km (2,500 miles) of high-speed lines lags countries such as Germany or Switzerland, though line age and works costs partly explain the gap. Until this year Spain had among the lowest accident rates in the EU, with just one or fewer fatalities per thousand kilometres of track, per Eurostat. Spain's worst rail accident remains the 2013 derailment outside Santiago de Compostela, in which 80 people died after a train veered off a curved section of track.

The cause of Wednesday's accident has not yet been confirmed.