The Lisbon funicular had been inspected hours before the accident.

BarcelonaPortuguese authorities updated the death toll from yesterday afternoon's Lisbon funicular accident on Thursday. While seventeen fatalities had been reported in the morning, the figure has been revised downwards and, for now, stands at sixteen dead and twenty-one injured, five of them in critical condition. According to hospital sources, the initial error was due to a duplicate registration of one of the victims. Among the injured were two Spanish citizens, who have already been discharged.

Several local media outlets reported on Thursday that the Gloria funicular had passed a safety inspection just hours before the accident and that the technical report concluded that it met "all conditions for operation." However, in statements to reporters, Pedro de Brito Bogas, the president of Carris, the city's public transport company, declined to confirm this and stressed that the various investigations—judicial, police, and technical, one by the company and the other independent—will be required to clarify the causes. In principle, the initial conclusions should be known this Friday, although the various ongoing investigations may take months to complete.

Local media insist that the inspection of the vehicles lasted thirty-three minutes, and all the criteria analyzed were found to have been met. The report concludes that the funicular met "all the conditions for operation." The document also indicates that a cable with a lifespan of 600 days was to be replaced in 263 days.

The tragedy has shocked the country, which has declared a day of official mourning nationwide and three days of mourning in Lisbon. Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro called the incident "one of the most serious human tragedies in the country's recent history." The accident occurred on one of the city's most iconic tourist attractions, the Gloria funicular, one of four similar lines that attract millions of tourists and Lisbon residents each year. In addition to the line involved in the accident, the other three—Bica, Lavra, and Graça—suspended operations to undergo exhaustive safety inspections.

Hypotheses about the causes

Although this information is only provisional, initial hypotheses about the accident point to the breakage of one of the two safety cables of the popular elevator, which connects Praça dos Restauradores (in the lower part of the city) with Jardim de São Pedro de Alcântara (in Bairro Alto). The vehicle travels approximately 265 meters in just three minutes, overcoming a gradient of more than 17%, a total of 48 vertical meters.

The system of these popular elevators consists of two yellow electric-traction vehicles traveling in opposite directions and connected by the underground cable that supposedly broke. When one goes up, the other goes down, acting as a counterweight and balancing the mechanical stress. Each vehicle could carry around 40 passengers and transported nearly three million residents and tourists annually.

The tram involved in the accident was heading toward the Baixa district when it lost control, accelerated down the steep slope, and derailed, crashing violently into a building on Calzada da Gloria. However, the technical failure was twofold. Without the natural braking power of the counterweight system due to the cable break, the car should have stopped with the activation of the emergency brakes. Following the impact, the vehicle was overturned in the street, completely destroyed, as if it were at a fair. The second vehicle on the line, which was at the other end of the route, was stopped when the cable broke, dragging it upwards. In this case, the brakes and the guardrail prevented an even greater roll.

A historic funicular

The Gloria funicular, inaugurated in 1885, already suffered a derailment seven years ago. At that time, although there were no injuries, the service was halted for a month to carry out all kinds of checks. But the tragedy has sparked controversy. Former maintenance workers warned that a similar situation could happen again.

According to the News Diary, the union leader of Fectrans and STRUP, Manuel Leal, has revealed that Carris maintenance employees had repeatedly expressed concern about the condition of the elevators, including the Gloria elevator. The union alleges that, since the service was outsourced to a private company, safety has been compromised and demands that management return to the responsibility of Carris. "The workers themselves were already reporting differences between the maintenance performed on Carris' equipment a few years ago and what is currently being done, especially regarding the tension of the safety cables on these elevators," Leal told Lusa news agency.

The current maintenance contract, signed in 2022 with the company MNTC (Servicios Técnicos de Engenharia) for almost €1.2 million annually—and which included the Gloria funicular—ended on August 30, 2025, after an open tender. At Thursday's press conference, the Carris chief stated that a direct contract had been in place since August 31 and asserted that "there has been no interruption in the maintenance service." Bogas defended to the press that "the maintenance protocol has been scrupulously followed" and affirmed that investment in safety had increased in recent years. Maintenance has been carried out by external companies for fourteen years.

However, for Leal, the Gloria derailment "unfortunately supports the workers' complaints," and should lead the Carris board of directors, once a thorough investigation into the causes has been conducted, to reconsider outsourcing the service.