The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, has retracted and cooled the debate on a possible long and imminent closure of the Barcelona-Madrid high-speed line while the renovation work lasts. The idea, launched last week by the minister himself following the accident between two trains in Urda, in Toledo, reopened an old debate in the sector and generated rejection from the Generalitat. Puente clarified this Tuesday that it is a "debate," and completely ruled out that it is a measure that could be implemented immediately. “I want to make it clear that no decision has been made,” said Puente, who acknowledged that perhaps he did not explain himself well.

We drive a car without thinking that we have in our hands a machine capable of killing. We turn on the turn signal, change lanes, and go through a traffic light with the naturalness of someone doing a household chore. Repetition makes us forget its importance. We normalize what we do every day.

All the things that go through our minds and bodies after an accident we suffer without having experienced it. The empathy that puts us in others' shoes: of those who weep, of those who wait, of those who despair. The chance that manifests itself continuously: who did not get on the train despite having the ticket, who was in another carriage, who changed seats while already on the train. The heads and tails of the world. Solidarity and greed. People who give and people who take. The vultures that feed ahead of time. The system that allows that, while bodies of snatched lives are still being searched for, business begins to be made with tickets that skyrocket in price and scams that unscrupulously take advantage of pain. And those who are always campaigning and do not stop doing so because they come first and their unbearable noise does not intend to solve, only to deafen. The wheel that turns and turns and places thoughts on top of one another so that we never quite finish sifting through them.

At the time of the morning that I am speaking to you, Minister Óscar Puente has not yet appeared, who has called a press conference in Urda. The still-minister Puente, we should say, because he should have already resigned. To demand his resignation, the three fatal accidents this year, with a total toll of 116 deaths, would be enough. But today it is even more evident what we perceived on the first day, at Puente's first press conference: the desire to shirk any blame and point the finger at the control center operator. It was not enough for him to point it out on the first day, but yesterday he leaked the audio of the conversations between the control center and the drivers of the trains that collided, in an attempt to reinforce the idea that it was all due to human error. If a single person can cause a tragedy like this, it is because everything is poorly set up. If Puente's railway management was superb, the informative management of the accident has been indecent. Sánchez must know what he is doing, but this third tragedy (Adamuz, Gelida, Urda), if they insist on saying that it is a worker's fault, will sweep them away electorally.

The high-speed accident in Toledo could be an isolated tragedy, but the fact that it occurred only nine months after another fatal crash, the one in Adamuz, multiplies its impact and makes things really very difficult for the Spanish government to convince public opinion, just over four weeks before the elections, that there is no structural problem of management or resources in the railway system. It is true that, with the information available so far, it seems that the two accidents obey completely different causes. In the first case, the derailment was due to a crack in the track, therefore, to a problem with the road infrastructure. And in the second, the safety system, first, and the traffic management from the control center, later, would have failed.

The unfortunate chain of technical failures and human errors that ended in the collision of two high-speed trains in Urda, Toledo, opens up many questions about how it could have happened and what technical factors could explain a disaster of these characteristics. Transport sector expert and director of the Terminus Transport Studies Centre, Joan Carles Salmerón, clarifies technical terms and the main unknowns still surrounding the accident for the ARA. There are six questions to provide context and understand key concepts.

At 8:53 a.m. this Wednesday, two high-speed trains collided between the towns of Mora and Urda, in Toledo. The accident occurred when a Renfe AVE train struck an Iryo train from behind, which was stopped. The railway tragedy, which according to the latest report has already left at least 68 dead and dozens injured, many of whom are in serious condition, is now the second-worst accident in the history of Spanish high-speed rail. We explain the chronology of the events in this map.

At 8:54 in the morning, Nicolás was listening to music sitting in the sixth carriage of an AVE train heading to Seville to visit his girlfriend. He makes this journey three or four times a month. But today was different. All of a sudden, the seats were dislodged, a group of people fell together, they ended up crushed and he could not move. “I looked and I realized that I was on the opposite track. It was like Adamuz. I got up and tried to open the door,” he remembers in conversation with ARA. But, with the impact, he had lost his glasses and could not read the instructions, so he had to ask for help from the other passengers. “When I got out, I could hear the screams from the seventh carriage, which was destroyed. And I saw two people on the ground who were begging me while crying to let them have my mobile to call their family. One could not move and I had to hold the phone for him,” he recounts.

Second railway tragedy in Spain in less than a year on the line between Seville and Madrid, which already ranks as one of the most tragic accidents in the state's railway history. This Wednesday, two high-speed trains, one Renfe AVE and another from Iryo, collided a few minutes before 9 a.m. in Urda, in the province of Toledo. The latest toll of victims stands at 68 dead, and more than a hundred injured admitted to hospitals, according to the government of Castilla-La Mancha. The final number of victims and missing persons, however, is still unknown and authorities fear it will continue to rise.

Renfe has already begun the tasks to dismantle the train that caught fire on Monday on the high-speed line between Barcelona and Madrid and which has kept this corridor running at half capacity since then. The work to remove this part of the train, the most complicated one, began on the night between Thursday and Friday. Once cleared of scrap metal, it will be necessary to check the condition of the track and the catenary and, if necessary, repair it. Nevertheless, the infrastructure manager, Adif, is maintaining the planned schedule and expects that the line will be able to return to normal next week. Even so, at this time neither Renfe nor Adif can specify which exact day it will be possible to return to circulating on both tracks.

Normal high-speed rail service between Barcelona and Madrid will not be restored until the beginning of next week. This was announced this Wednesday by the new spokesperson for Adif in Catalonia, Antonio Carmona, who explained that the work to remove the train affected by Monday's fire is complex and can only be carried out at night, because it is incompatible with train traffic on the adjacent track.

The railway chaos due to the fire on a high-speed train continues this Tuesday morning. Train circulation resumed yesterday, after being halted all afternoon, but trains can only run on a single track in a specific section in Aragon, which greatly complicates the mobility of the trains and the more than 11,000 passengers affected yesterday.

Competition has warned Renfe and established that it must open its workshops in La Sagra, Toledo, to the competitor operator in high-speed Iryo to be able to carry out the maintenance of its trains. The National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) has partially upheld Iryo's complaint about access to Renfe's heavy maintenance facilities. As the supervisory body communicated this Tuesday, Renfe Mantenimiento must allow Iryo's trains access to the workshop for the disassembly and assembly of their bogies.

When at the beginning of the year the big Rodalies crisis broke out –after the fatal accident in Gelida and the numerous damages caused by two storms– many users looked for an alternative to avoid the incidents of the conventional service. Those who could, switched to Avant trains: they are more expensive, but also faster, as they run between cities on the high-speed network with regulated fares, and accumulate many fewer delays. For many travelers, arriving on time for work, a medical appointment, or university has already become a priority that weighs more than the cost of the ticket.

High-speed rail wins by a large margin in terms of passenger numbers on the main state corridors, but despite this, the number of planes making the same journeys has not decreased, although it is true that the number of seats offered by airlines has fallen. This is the main conclusion of an article prepared by researchers from the University of Barcelona, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the Open University of Catalonia, signed by Daniel Albalate, director of the Observatory of Analysis and Evaluation of Public Policies at the UB; Albert Gragera, professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the UAB, and Pere Suau, head of the Sustainability, Management and Transport Research Group (SUMAT), attached to the Research Centre on Digital Transformation and Governance (UOC-DIGIT), and professor of Economics and Business studies.

Traveling from Barcelona to Madrid by high-speed train now costs 44% less than five years ago, when the sector's liberalization began. Although prices have rebounded this year by 9% compared to 2025, the ticket price is now clearly lower than in 2019, according to data from Trainline, the train and bus ticket sales platform.

The National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) calculates that more than 509,000 travelers have given up using high-speed trains between Madrid and Barcelona compared to the times when they made the journey in "historical best times".

California has been planning a high-speed rail line for years, but construction is progressing very slowly and only a few sections have been completed; Spain, however, has one of the most extensive high-speed rail networks in the world and continues to open new sections. Excessive regulation, institutional obstacles, and the way politicians respond to local interests explain why so much is being built in Spain and so little in the United States.

Slow service, delays, and maintenance work on the high-speed rail line between Barcelona and Madrid have forced the train companies operating the service—Renfe, Iryo, and Ouigo—to adjust their schedules. Specifically, the rail operators have agreed with Adif, the company responsible for managing and maintaining the infrastructure, to establish new timetables starting this Thursday, February 5, and extend the journey time between Barcelona and Madrid by approximately 25 minutes, according to sources at the Ministry of Labor. As an alternative that is growing in demand these days, Iberia has decided to cap economy class fares on flights from Barcelona to Madrid at 99 euros until February 19. On the high-speed rail network, as explained this Monday, the last trains running each day on this corridor will be eliminated, as they were arriving within the maintenance window during which Adif is dedicated to inspecting and repairing the infrastructure, the source of the current problems.

The rail chaos that Catalonia has been experiencing for the past week is worsening. The closure of the Rubí tunnel has disrupted freight traffic leaving the Port of Barcelona bound for France. After detecting a crack in the tunnel's return section, the port has had to completely halt traffic since Monday. The disruption in Rubí, which has persisted for days, prevents trains from Barcelona and southern Catalonia from reaching the rest of the continent, as well as preventing trains from arriving from France.