High-speed train collision in Spain kills at least 39

The current government has been found to be cutting corners in maintaining the Cercanías commuter railway network[1]. Indeed last year some machinists had to derail a train to stop it from crashing other[2].

The former Transport Minister is jailed because of corruption in public contracts, and hiring prostitutes[3][4].

The government is doing a poor job maintaining the current railway network.

[1]: https://www.eldebate.com/espana/madrid/20251119/cercanias-ma...

[2]: https://www.vozpopuli.com/espana/tren-accidentado-renfe-reco...

[3]: https://www.infobae.com/espana/2025/12/23/adif-altero-puntua...

[4]: https://www.elespanol.com/espana/tribunales/20250412/koldo-e...

For many years the Spanish state-owned company RENFE had a monopoly on Spain's huge high speed rail network. However their high prices, inconvenient schedules and poor customer service were often criticized, and so when, to the annoyance of RENFE and many spanish politicians, additional foreign operators entered the market on the key Madrid - Barcelona route, ridership doubled whilst ticket prices halved.

So I would standby for this tragedy to be used for political purposes to try and get foreign operators banned from Spanish tracks, regardless of the facts of the matter.

Taking the commuter train to and from Dublin, sometimes another train on the other direction passes and it's a bit unnerving. I cannot imagine such a collision between two high speed trains :(

If you’re interested in this kind of thing, look up plainly difficult on youtube. He has more videos on train crashes than I’ve seen, and I’m embarrassed how many I’ve seen. Here’s one to get you started: https://youtu.be/VV2rIHEp5AM?si=sSBT9s49PqbLTGbt

There are a lot of safety lessons embedded in these videos, which is why I like them. I also did a double take when I heard "semaphore"; its history goes back far longer than the ~century of software engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore

As a reference, ~1500-2000 people die every year due to cars in Spain.

The train in question is a Frecciarossa 1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frecciarossa_1000

The Italians designed it but won't run it at more than 300km/h in Italy citing local infrastructure concerns. I guess that leaves other countries to find the edge cases. I'll be interested to find out how fast it was going during the crash.

Updated to 39 people now, but probably the number can still go up

Blame game has started. Minister saying the track was renewed in May. Train operator saying the train was inspected 4 days ago.

I'm in Spain currently. Very sad news.

Terrible and condolences to anybody affected.

For a bit of context according to the OECD 2023 Spain had ~1800 on the road during the previous year, so that's about 5/day. There are more deaths on the road in Spain in a couple of weeks than this tragic accident. Either way it's too many deaths obviously but I want to highlight what a freak event this is compared to a more popular mode of transportation.

Edit : Motivation behind that clarification https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die... read some months ago but that stuck with me.

Always try to sit in seats where your back is toward the direction of motion.

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