Atocha Railway Station

Because the air traffic guy is like, okay, you can, you know, Delta 3-5, you can land on flight path number two, and it's all very calm and organised and things.

And if you listen to the audio of this poor guy in Madrid, in Atocha, in the centre, and you listen to the poor, the train operator, the train operator is going, well, do I go on, do I not? And then you hear the guy in the control tower in Atocha going, hang on a second, momento, momento, and you can see him going...

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The investigation must also identify the people responsible for the conditions of this particular case.

On the 29th, the CGT Railway Department, in response to public concern over the Atocha train station controller, demanded a general review of the organisation, staffing, scheduling and traffic conditions.

The reaction of the workers, which was extended to a planned safety strike, was also the subject of this report concerning CEMAF, the train drivers' union, and the decision taken to continue the strike on October 29th.

The Spanish Union of Train Drivers and Assistance is maintaining the strike called for this October 29th in defense of rail safety, as well as the fulfillment of commitments to achieve a structural change in safety.

So it says on there, on the 28th of October, 26, at 8.54am, an AVE high-speed train collided end-on with a stationary IRO high-speed train in Los Yebenes, Toledo, on the Madrid-Cevil high-speed rail line, killing at least 69 people.

Both trains involved in the crash were travelling from Atocha station in Madrid to Santa Justa station in Seville.

Government sources gave the likely cause of the crash as human error in the manual operation of signalling after an automated system had failed.

So it tells us about what time the train left and how many people were on board.

So the Independent Authority for Technical Investigation of Accidents and Incidents, the AITAT, is responsible for investigating railway accidents in Spain.

A recording of the communications between the ADIF Control Centre and the trains was leaked to the media.

Oscar Puente, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, went to ADIF's Control Centre in Atocha to learn the details of the incident.

He described it as inexplicable that ADIF's control centre authorised the AVE high-speed train to resume normal operation when the IRYO train was still stationary in front of it.

Luego veremos también cómo fue exactamente el accidente y os lo voy a mostrar con, eh, un mapa para que veáis exactamente cómo ocurrió.

Bien, entre ambos trenes viajaban un total de quinientos treinta pasajeros, ciento cuarenta y siete personas a bordo del Iryo, que había partido a las siete y cincuenta y cuatro horas de Madrid-Atocha.

Trescientos setenta y ocho pasajeros a bordo del AVE de Renfe, con salida a las ocho horas desde la misma estación.

El impacto fue de una vil violencia descomunal.

Sometimes you have these like mental images in your head that you can't get out and it definitely was need to find a way to process that

so how did this happen first the lzb rail security system went down at around 8 30 a.m halting at least half a dozen trains including the italian irio train traveling from madrid to seville that stopped near urda toledo Command of the trains passed to the control center in Atocha, Madrid, and a second train, a national carrier Renfe train, also bound for Seville on the same track, was given the green light to restart its journey at full speed, potentially reaching over 200 kilometers an hour.

When the Erio train failed to restart with its 147 passengers stranded, the Renfe train carrying 397 people had around 20 minutes to build up speed, eventually slamming into the back of the Erio train, causing this catastrophic collision.

So that is what the government is pointing out right now, a human error that caused this terrible tragedy, the second rail fatal accident in Spain this year.

But then you've got these private ones coming on board as well, some of which are high speed as well.

The Irio train set off from Atocha train station.

The two main train stations in Madrid, Atocha, centre south, and Chamartín, centre north.

They connect to each other.

If you're going from Alicante to Santander, for example, you'd go through, you'd go through Atocha.

If you're going to Santander, you stay on the train.

You go underground, basically under the Castellana, that north-south road, Recoletos, Paseo del Prado.

You go under that all the way, Chamartín, you come back out, and then you carry on overground until the north, for example.