Another high-speed rail collision south of Madrid has shaken Spain: 69 bodies were recovered near Toledo, only nine months after the crash near Córdoba that killed 46, the BBC reports. Personal tragedy has become a national crisis weeks before the snap election called by Pedro Sánchez.

The formal investigation has only just begun, but Transport Minister Óscar Puente quickly suggested “human error,” pushing blame away from the cabinet. On Friday he set out “objective facts”: the LZB signalling system has failed 170 times this year — “normal,” he said, around the EU average — and the problem arises when control switches to manual.

In this case a controller cleared a stalled train to restart at up to 160 km/h even though a second train was stuck ahead. The impending collision was visible on Madrid control-centre screens; the advancing train was never ordered to stop. The PP calls for Puente’s “moral” resignation; he says his duty is to stay and improve the system.

Polls already showed the PP first, possibly with Vox. After the crash, Socialist chances plunged: voters link the disaster to a spiral of crises (alleged family corruption, Ceuta migration, housing evictions). At Toledo station, travellers speak of fear and of shifting votes to the right.

Small Madrid protests, some far-right-led, and silence on half-empty trains capture a mood of a “country that’s not working” — and a campaign Sánchez is rapidly losing control of.

Image: AVE train in Spain (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).

Sources consulted: Spain train disaster clouds Sánchez chances of re-election - BBC.