On 28 October 2026 a collision on the Madrid–Seville high-speed line near Toledo killed 69 people, the second fatal crash on the corridor this year after 46 deaths near Córdoba in January.

Investigators point to a signaling glitch, manual control by Adif and a controller’s instruction to proceed past a red light, while drivers’ unions cite long-term underinvestment in maintenance.

Only about 16 percent of high-speed rail spending under Sánchez has gone to maintenance, far below French, German and Italian levels, intensifying pre-election pressure.

On October 28, 69 people were killed in a train crash in the Toledo province of central Spain. The collision occurred on the high-speed line connecting Madrid with the southwestern city of Seville, just one month before a general election on November 29. It is the second disaster on the Madrid–Seville corridor this year, after a crash near Córdoba in the south in January killed 46 people. Due to its timing, the Toledo collision is likely to be even more politically contentious than the last, further diminishing Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s chances of reelection. Both tragedies suggest that a once cutting-edge rail network is now showing its age—and that successive Spanish governments have failed to invest in its maintenance.

Both the Socialists and conservative Popular Party (PP) halted their campaign activities on the day of the collision, which occurred just before 9 AM near the village of Urda, about 90 miles south of Madrid. Hostilities between Sánchez and PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo were suspended, while both leaders visited the crash site and expressed solidarity with the victims’ families. Sánchez announced that his government was working to ensure that such a catastrophe “never happens again”—a promise he also made after the crash near Adamuz in January (alongside an admission that Spain’s railway safety protocols were “not infallible”). Both he and Feijóo are locked in a battle for first place on November 29, with most polls putting the PP a few points ahead of the Socialists.

Only Vox, a party to the right of the PP........

© Eurasia Review