At 8:30 in the morning on Wednesday, October 28, six trains running on the Madrid-Seville high-speed line were affected by a computer fault in the LZB protection system. None of its passengers could know then that that incident, apparently limited to the functioning of the railway infrastructure, would be the beginning of a sequence that, just 23 minutes later, would end with a Renfe AVE crashed into the rear of a stopped Iryo in Urda (Toledo).
The collision, recorded around 8:53 a.m., has left to date 69 dead and numerous injured people. Emergency teams have worked for two days among the remains of the convoys, while hospitals attend to the survivors and families wait for news about their loved ones.
The tragedy has opened a judicial and technical investigation that has still not determined all its causes. The first explanations from the Ministry of Transport point to an incorrect authorization to resume traffic, but the recordings known later raise other questions about the information available at the Adif control center, the communications with both trains and the procedures that should have been applied when the safety system failed.
The 23 decisive minutes
Wednesday, October 28, 2026 · Urda (Toledo)
ReconstructionA computer incident affects the railway protection system and stops six trains.
Adif control center in Atocha tells the AVE to resume normal movement.
The driver reports that it remains stopped before the entrance to Urda.
She reports that she cannot restart the LZB and remains stopped.
The AVE hits the Iryo from behind, in the vicinity of kilometer 118.
Approximate times reconstructed from official explanations
8:30 a.m. Six trains stopped by a breakdown
The first incident occurred around 8:30, when a computer failure interrupted the operation of the LZB system on a stretch of approximately 63 kilometers of the Madrid-Seville line.
This system supervises railway traffic and transmits information to trains to control their speed and ensure that safety conditions are respected. When communication was lost, the six affected convoys were stopped.
Among them were the Renfe AVE 2080, which had left Madrid-Atocha at 8:00 bound for Seville, and the Iryo 6076, which had departed a few minutes earlier toward the same city.
Management of the incident went to Adif's control center in Atocha, from where instructions to restore traffic were coordinated. From that moment on, communications between the drivers and the railway traffic managers became a key piece of what would happen later.
8:36 a.m. The order to resume movement
Six minutes after the breakdown, the AVE driver received authorization to continue his journey. According to recordings broadcast by various media, from the control center they indicated to him to disconnect and reconnect the LZB and to resume circulation through the lateral signaling blocking system, with "normal movement".
The expression is decisive for the investigation. The visual running procedure, foreseen for certain situations of loss of protection, requires taking extreme precautions and traveling at a reduced speed that allows the train to stop before any obstacle.
The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, described on Wednesday the authorization as "erroneous" and "inexplicable" and assured that circulation should have been carried out at a speed of about 40 kilometers per hour, instead of allowing the AVE to continue at considerably higher speeds.
However, determining responsibilities does not depend solely on identifying who transmitted the order. Investigators must establish which procedure corresponded to be applied, what information each person involved had, and why the existing safety barriers did not prevent two trains from ending up occupying the same stretch of track.
8:41 a.m. A train remains stopped in Urda
While the AVE continued its journey, the Iryo remained stopped at the entrance to Urda. Its driver communicated to the control center that she had suffered a loss of transmission and that she could not resume circulation normally.
The recordings show that Adif officials were informed of the Iryo's situation when the AVE had already received authorization to continue.
The distance between both trains began to narrow. The AVE traveled approximately 25 kilometers during the 17 minutes that elapsed between the authorization and the impact.
8:48 a.m. The warning that did not prevent the crash
Five minutes before the accident, the Iryo driver contacted the control center again. Her train was still stopped and she could not restart the LZB system.
"I am still stopped at the entrance signal," she communicated, according to the audio published by the press. The conversation constitutes one of the central moments of the reconstruction. The control center received new confirmation that the Iryo was still immobilized, but the communications known so far do not show that an order was transmitted to the AVE to stop before reaching its position.
8:53 a.m. The impact
Around 8:53, the AVE hit the Iryo from behind at kilometer point 118, in the vicinity of Urda.
The violence of the collision destroyed part of the convoys and caused two cars of the Iryo to fall down an embankment. The front part of the AVE was severely damaged and several coaches suffered enormous damage.
Hundreds of people were traveling on the two trains. Many were headed to Seville, where neither of the convoys arrived that morning.
At 9:10, Adif publicly announced the interruption of traffic on the Madrid-Andalusia high-speed line as a consequence of a rear-end collision between two trains. The real scale of the accident would become known progressively during the following hours.
The first day. Rescue, hospitals and families seeking answers
The arrival of emergency services gave way to a rescue operation that lasted throughout Wednesday and the early hours of Thursday.
Firefighters, medical personnel, Civil Guard, Judicial Police and members of the Military Emergency Unit worked among the remains of the trains. The presence of deformed and displaced carriages made it necessary to use heavy machinery to access the most damaged areas that were still at the scene of the events on Thursday night.
At the same time, hospitals in Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid began to receive the injured. The magnitude of the accident mobilized extraordinary health resources and opened a complex process of victim identification.
At the Institute of Legal Medicine of Toledo, forensic teams began identification tasks, while the Civil Guard collected missing-person reports and DNA samples from relatives.
The uncertainty about the whereabouts of some passengers lasted for hours, amid calls to hospitals, consultations with emergency services and trips by relatives to Toledo.
Thursday 29. The toll rises to 69 dead
On Thursday morning, the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, confirmed that the number of dead had risen from 68 to 69 people, after a new death was recorded in the hospital.
Of the 110 injured treated in hospitals in the autonomous community, 60 had been discharged and 50 remained hospitalized. Among them were 15 patients classified as red code, although four of those in the most serious condition were evolving favorably, according to the regional president.
Rescue and inspection work continued during the day, especially in the areas where it was still necessary to move the wrecked carriages.
In the afternoon there was confusion over the number of fatal victims. The Railway Accident Investigation Commission initially published a file on the accident with 74 dead, but shortly afterward corrected that figure and reduced it to 69, in line with the official toll provided by Castilla-La Mancha.
Urda shakes the pre-campaign
The accident triggered a political crisis that reaches the Government in the middle of the campaign for the general elections of November 29, barely nine months after the Adamuz (Córdoba) tragedy, in which 46 people died. Two accidents add up to 115 fatalities.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, described the succession of both tragedies as "unacceptable," although Moncloa has reaffirmed its confidence in Óscar Puente, who rules out resigning and will remain at the head of the Ministry of Transport. The decision comes amid criticism from the opposition, railway unions and even some voices within the PSOE, especially after the minister pointed to an erroneous human decision in the management of traffic.
For its part, the PP has requested the urgent appearance of Sánchez before the Permanent Deputation of Congress, while partners demand explanations about safety protocols and the circumstances of the accident. Puente will appear before the Chamber on Tuesday, November 3, with an investigation still open and numerous pending questions about the decisions adopted from the Adif control center.
The shock over the accident also led this Thursday to King Felipe VI and Letizia to the Toledo University Hospital, where they visited the injured, spoke with the health professionals and conveyed their support to the families of the victims.
Subsequently, they met with relatives in the Casa Sacerdotal of Toledo. During his address to the media, Felipe VI called for the investigation to clarify "how and why this catastrophe has happened" and to allow measures to be adopted "so that this does not happen again." "As a society, we are once again suffering a very hard blow, but we must continue moving forward even with that pain, never forgetting the wound left by so many people who have lost their lives", said the monarch, who asked that the consequences of the tragedy be faced "with dignity and rigor."
The questions that remain open
Two days after the accident, the main sequence of what happened is beginning to be documented, but essential questions still remain.
Why did the LZB system fail? What procedure should have been applied to restore traffic? Why was the AVE authorized to continue with normal movement? The answers will determine whether the tragedy was the consequence of an individual action, a succession of failures or a combination of factors that have still not been clarified.
In Urda, meanwhile, the identification tasks, care for the survivors and support for the families continue. The reconstruction of those 23 minutes is essential to explain how the accident happened, but also to answer the question that remains behind each new piece of information about the accident: what would have had to function differently for the two trains to have reached their destination.