The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has explained that the railway safety system LZB has suffered up to 170 outages so far this year, a volume of incidents that he has described as "within normality" for the operation of the railway system.
At a press conference, Puente acknowledged that this data may be striking for citizens who are not familiar with the technical field, although he stressed that it is within usual parameters in the European context and at "very stable" levels if compared with the last 6 or 7 years, as well as being below the average recorded in the two previous fiscal years.
"I want them to understand that safety systems, whether they are called LZB or ERTMS, are not in the air, they use physical supports for their communication, physical supports that are found both in the infrastructure and in the trains, as onboard equipment, and those physical supports fail," the minister said, underscoring that the technology depends on material elements that can suffer incidents.
According to what he detailed, of the 170 incidents recorded in 2024, around 75% are explained by causes "completely unrelated to the system itself", among which he cited vandalism, cable theft —which, he pointed out, occur very frequently— or adverse weather episodes that affect the infrastructure.
The Transport minister also clarified that a "dropout" of the system should not be confused with a "failure" of it. In relation to the recent accident, he specified that the system did not fail, but rather dropped out, since when the dropout occurred all trains were automatically stopped, which is precisely the expected behavior to preserve safety.
"What happened is that the system had a problem with communications and what it did was act and block traffic immediately to avoid safety risks. That is, if the LZB or the ERTMS is not working properly, it stops and guarantees the total safety of traffic," Puente insisted, thus defending the robustness of the protection protocols.
The minister also announced that the ERTMS system, whose installation on the Madrid-Andalusia line was completed in June 2026 and which is currently in the laboratory testing phase, is expected to enter operational service in January 2027.