At least 30 people died and around 80 were injured on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, when two high-speed trains collided near the Urda station in the Spanish province of Toledo. The toll was confirmed by the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, who anticipated that the figure will rise as emergency teams reach the most damaged sections of the convoy.
The crash occurred on the Madrid-Andalusia line, the backbone of Europe's most extensive high-speed rail system and the world's second largest after China, which carried 25 million passengers in 2024, according to The Guardian. The two convoys were carrying 544 people: 397 on AVE 2080 and 146 plus a baby on Iryo 7076, according to the same count. The incident comes nine months after the Adamuz crash in Córdoba, which left 46 dead and 152 injured in January of this year. The European Commission offered support for the investigation, and its spokesperson, Paula Pinho, said it is too early to draw conclusions while the emergency response continues.
García-Page broke down the toll: 24 dead on the AVE and six on the Iryo, with 80 injured, of whom 30 have minor injuries and 50 have injuries of varying severity. Al Jazeera reported at least 39 dead in a later update that day, without specifying the number of injured. Service was suspended in both directions on the Madrid-Andalusia line, and the Royal Spanish Football Federation postponed the first-round Copa del Rey matches scheduled for the day. Reports from Spanish media gathered by The Guardian point to a possible signaling failure in the LZB system, a hypothesis the authorities are keeping under investigation.
The reopening of the line and the investigation into the causes will define the coming days, with technical reviews of a network that moves tens of millions of passengers a year. For the passenger corridors under study in Mexico, the case leaves a concrete reference on signaling and emergency protocols.
This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.