Madrid was rocked by violent protests last night as public fury intensified over the failures believed to have contributed to Wednesday’s fatal train crash, which claimed 69 lives.
The unrest followed the release of an audio recording from the control centre. Captured just minutes before the collision, it appears to show operators failing to alert one of the train drivers to the danger ahead.
The disaster is Spain’s third fatal railway accident this year. Two separate crashes in January killed 47 people in one incident and the train driver in another, while dozens of passengers were also injured.
Protests turned violent outside the Ministry of Transport on Wednesday evening, with demonstrators calling for Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Transport Minister Oscar Puente to step down.
The crash occurred shortly before 9am when a Renfe service travelling from Madrid to Seville struck a stationary Iryo train on the same route near Toledo. Three carriages were derailed in the impact.
The collision killed 69 people and injured more than 100. Survivors described the scene as “apocalyptic”, saying the devastation looked “as if a bomb had been planted”.
The confirmed death toll increased by one on Thursday, rising from the previous figure of 68.
Local reports said the demonstration began near Nuevos Ministerios at around 8pm and was peaceful at first, before protesters and police became embroiled in direct confrontations.
Some demonstrators overturned rubbish bins and at least one person reportedly started a fire. Video footage showed officers forcefully driving back protesters holding banners and Spanish flags.
The protest near Nuevos Ministerios began peacefully at around 8pm before deteriorating into clashes between demonstrators and police, according to local reports
Crowds were heard shouting “Pedro Sanchez is to blame” and “Oscar Puente is a murderer” as they demanded the politicians’ resignations
Police officers were filmed pushing protesters back during the unrest in Madrid on Wednesday night
A protester holds a flag featuring Pedro Sanchez alongside the words “Get out!”
Chants of “Pedro Sanchez is to blame” and “Oscar Puente is a murderer” echoed through the crowd as protesters called for both politicians to resign.
Riot Control Unit officers used pepper spray and rubber bullets in an effort to break up the gathering.
One demonstrator told El Mundo: “We weren’t doing anything, and then suddenly they pushed us violently and began ordering us to leave. When they realised many people were staying, they tear-gassed us. There are elderly people here.”
Several hard-right organisations, including Revuelta, which has the backing of Spain’s VOX party, are reportedly encouraging further protests across the country.
The protests came as audio recordings released on Wednesday appeared to reveal that control-room staff did not warn the approaching Renfe driver that a signal failure had left the Iryo train stranded on the tracks.
In the recording, the Iryo driver tells the control centre at 8.41am that the LZB safety system is no longer functioning and that she has stopped at the Urda entry signal.
The controller then gave her permission to continue under normal operating conditions. The same authorisation had been issued to the Renfe driver five minutes earlier, but no warning was given about the failed signal or the stationary train ahead.
At 8.48am, just five minutes before the crash, the Iryo driver called again, warning she still could not restart the system. The controller told her to try again and call back if she had any problems.
Transport Minister Oscar Puente said on Wednesday that an automatic control system went down on 69 kilometres (43 miles) of track, causing all trains there to be stopped.
But the control centre decided to ‘resume traffic in circumstances that, from our point of view, are inexplicable,’ Puente said, with the Renfe train travelling 25 kilometres before striking the Iryo.
The control centre ‘had more than enough time to verify the error, and they did not fix it’, he added.
Flags flew at half-mast on public buildings on Thursday as the country observed a day of mourning, with official ceremonies and public events cancelled or scaled back as a mark of respect for the victims.
Investigators survey debris amongst the damaged carriages of a train crash between two high-speed trains
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A damaged carriage is removed with heavy machinery at the site of a train crash between two high-speed trains
Emergency services combed through the train wreckage overnight to find further victims on the key line linking Madrid with the southern city of Seville, hoisting pieces of mangled metal with cranes.
At daybreak, police drones were once again flying over the crash site a few kilometres from the small village of Urda.
A school in Urda, around 130 kilometres south of Madrid, is being used to allow relatives to enquire about their loved ones.
Teams of Red Cross workers offered support to groups of people who arrived, some of them in tears, amid crowds of police and journalists from around the world.
Red Cross psychologist Carmen Garcia said ‘long and hard hours’ were in store because ‘every person will manage it in their own way.
‘We have people who are in shock, who haven’t taken on board what has happened, angry people, sad, worried people. The grieving will be complicated,’ Garcia said.
Surviving passengers described horrific scenes following the crash yesterday morning.
Sebastian Herrero, 46, who was travelling on the Iryo train, said he was ‘thrown against the seats’ when the trains collided, and described how he was ‘in the air for about four or five seconds’, which felt like ‘a lifetime’.
He added: ‘There are three carriages of the Iryo, the three at the end, from which they keep taking people out and putting sheets on them. Corpses. It’s apocalyptic.
‘In those carriages, I find it very hard to believe there are any living people. It’s a twisted mass of metal. It’s as if they had planted a bomb.’
A survivor named Jesus said: ‘I saw a boy with an amputated arm walking away from the wreckage.’
Architect Joaquín Torres described the death of a horrifically injured fellow passenger.
He said: ‘I went up to a woman who said she was cold… she died in my arms. It was horrible, [she was] without legs, without arms.’
A passenger rescued from one of the trains involved in a collision arrives in Urda, Spain
Two people wait for updates outside a support center for relatives of missing victims in Urda
A Red Cross volunteer comforts a woman outside a support center for relatives of missing victims in Urda
One carriage caught fire and smoke was still pouring from the mangled wreckage as emergency responders reached the scene.
It emerged last night that Fatima Banez, Spain’s former employment minister, was among the dead.
Horrifying photographs showed a carriage impaled on a long steel rail that was forced through the floor and out of the roof.
Others showed passengers climbing out of twisted, broken carriages. David Gomez, a construction worker, was on a job with his brother and a colleague nearby when they heard the crash and ran to help.
‘People were trying to get out through the windows. We cut through some fences to access the area and treated people with first-aid kits we brought,’ he said. ‘As I was trying to pull a young woman out, there was a piece of a leg.’
One survivor said his carriage was ‘completely wrecked’, adding: ‘The impact was tremendous.
‘The carriage was completely destroyed. A man fell on top of me, but we were able to help him. It was a very dramatic scene.’
Another passenger said she was left ‘spinning on the floor’ by the impact.