image source, Reuters
The breaking news out of Spain this week was shocking, but also eerily familiar: another collision on the high-speed line south of Madrid, with reports of dozens of deaths.
Just nine months have passed since two trains collided near Córdoba, killing 46 people. Now, in central Spain, 69 bodies have been recovered among the remains scattered along the tracks and an embankment.
For the families of the victims it is devastating; a personal tragedy.
But it is also a national disaster that has undermined confidence in the country's railway network and in the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez. All this occurs just a few weeks before the early general elections that he himself called.
The formal investigation into the Toledo rail disaster has just begun, but the government has been quick to take control of the narrative.
From the first hours after the collision, Transport Minister Oscar Puente began to suggest that "human error" was to blame, evading responsibility as much as possible from the cabinet.
On Friday he appeared before the press for the second time to present what he called the "objective facts" of the accident and counter the wave of criticism against the government.
The opposition Popular Party (PP) is among those calling for his resignation as a "moral" and "ethical" measure.
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Instead of expressing "enormous pain and sadness" for the victims, Puente went on the offensive.
He rejected talk about a chronic lack of investment in infrastructure and insisted that Spain's high-speed signaling system, the LZB, was neither old nor inadequate: Germany and Austria use the same one.
In Spain, it has already failed 170 times so far this year, he revealed, but described that figure as "normal" and close to the EU average.
The problem lies in what happens later, when the system fails and line control becomes manual.
In this case, the minister highlighted a series of human errors that turned out to be catastrophic.
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Crucially, at one point, a controller ordered a stopped train to restart, authorizing it to proceed at speeds of up to 160 km/h (100 mph) even though a second train was stuck on the track ahead.
The imminent collision was evident in the audio communications and on the large screens of the control center in Madrid.
"They worked. We checked it. They could see what was happening," Puente confirmed. But there was never an order to stop the advancing train.
"I'm not a judge... But these are the facts," he said.
Would you then take personal and political responsibility anyway and resign? Puente, on the other hand, considered it his "duty" to remain as minister.
"I will face things, I will explain them, I will clarify them," he replied. "I will think about how to improve the system and give confidence to those who want to travel by train with peace of mind and safety."
But convincing the Spanish will require a lot of effort.
"It is not only a very serious accident, but the second in a very short time," says Paco Camas, from the pollster Ipsos.
The investigation into the accident that occurred in January in Adamuz, near Córdoba, remains open, and initial reports suggest that there was a crack in the tracks, something very different from the most recent collision.
But the impact is similar.
"This destroys people's trust not only in the railways, but in institutions in general," warns Camas. "And in Spain, when these things happen, we know that people blame their government."
For Sánchez's team, this is the latest episode in a spiral of crisis.
Allegations of corruption against close relatives of the president of the Spanish government persist, although everyone denies them.
This summer there was a sudden influx of immigrants from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. This caused right-wing opponents to cry out about incompetence and lack of funding.
Subsequently, the case of Maricarmen, an elderly woman who was forcibly evicted from her home, went viral and sparked street protests.
It was then that Sánchez called early elections.
His chances of winning the vote already seemed slim even before the train accident. Now they have collapsed.
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The most recent polls showed the center-right PP party in first place and forming a coalition with the far-right party Vox.
"They obtain this majority in almost 95% of the simulations we have carried out," explains Professor Pablo Simón, from the Carlos III University of Madrid.
But Sánchez had been running a positive campaign, trying to attract apathetic voters to the polls to vote for socialism.
Suddenly, the tone has changed.
"They have completely lost control of the agenda and the fervor of this campaign," Simon says. "Now it's going to be extremely difficult. There is a general feeling of decay, of a country that is not functioning properly. A depression."
There is also anger.
There have already been small protests over the train accident, led by far-right groups in Madrid, and a large number of police are on alert this weekend for possible new clashes organized online.
Here in Toledo, the atmosphere is nervous.
"We all traveled in silence and very sad," Paloma told me at the city station, where she had just arrived on a half-empty train.
She admitted that she is now scared of the high-speed network and is angry with the government.
"This accident will completely change our vows," Paloma said. "We will go from the left to the right. Because of everything that has happened."
Lucía takes the AVE high-speed train to go to Madrid every day, and she is also afraid.
"It was a human error. But there have already been two accidents with more than 100 deaths between them," he says. "The situation here is really serious. They have to change."
Producer Davide Ghiglione contributed to this report.
This article was originally written in English and we used an artificial intelligence tool to translate it. A BBC journalist reviewed the text before publication. Learn more about how we use AI.
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