Spain works to identify victims of train collision that killed 69

Authorities in Spain were working to identify the bodies of 69 victims of a high-speed train collision on Friday, October 30. Relatives faced mounting anguish as they waited for news.

Castilla-La Mancha leader Emiliano Garcia-Page warned that more deaths could not be ruled out. Emergency services had collected 31 bags of partial remains, complicating identification. Legal authorities said 70 missing-person reports had been filed; those reports could correspond to recovered bodies, all but five of which remained unidentified.

Relatives have supplied DNA samples to help identify victims of Wednesday's crash in Castilla-La Mancha. Rescue crews were searching the wreckage while bodies were being examined in morgues.

The army established a temporary morgue in Toledo because the city's existing facility could not accommodate all the bodies.

A Renfe service struck the rear of a stationary Iryo train outside Urda, around 130 kilometers south of Madrid. A failure of the LZB automatic safety system had stopped all trains on a 63-kilometer stretch, but a control center authorized the Renfe train to resume its journey while the Iryo train remained stopped.

Authorities said at least 68 people were killed and scores more injured when high-speed trains collided south of Madrid on Wednesday, October 28, 2026. They warned that the death toll was likely to rise.

A spokeswoman for the Castilla-La Mancha regional government said more than 100 people had been injured. Of those, 58 had been taken to hospital, including 15 in critical condition.

Transport Minister Oscar Puente said the collision followed an erroneous order for a train to proceed despite a technical failure in the automatic control system that had halted all services on a 69-km stretch.

Puente said the control centre had decided to resume traffic before the system was restored. He described the circumstances in which it restarted services as inexplicable from the ministry's perspective.

The Renfe train then travelled 25km before colliding with the stationary Iryo train, Puente said. He said its speed could have reached up to 200 kilometres per hour.

State railway operator Renfe confirmed that the main high-speed line from Madrid to southern Spain had been suspended after one of its services collided with a train operated by private Spanish company Iryo.

Authorities say at least 68 killed in train collision south of Madrid

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