Spain’s transportation minister said a train crash that killed dozens on Wednesday appeared to result from an “inexplicable” decision by traffic control operators to tell a high-speed train to continue its journey when another train was stopped farther along the tracks.
The minister, Óscar Puente, said he spent the morning watching a reconstruction of the accident and listening to audio recordings of communications between the control center in Madrid and the trains that crashed, and he gave a detailed account of what he said preceded the crash at a news conference.
At about 8:30 a.m. local time, an automatic train control system near the site of the crash went down because of a computer failure, Mr. Puente said. The safety system was inactive along a stretch of about 39 miles, or 63 kilometers, of tracks, so six trains traveling along that section were automatically stopped as a precaution. At that point, he said, a control center in Madrid took over.
“The control center communicated with the trains that had stopped, and at 8:36 a.m., the decision was made to allow the train that eventually collided with the stationary Iryo train to resume its journey as normal,” Mr. Puente said, referring to the private rail operator of the stopped train. “Was that the correct decision?”
Traffic controllers working for Adif, the state-owned company that manages Spain’s rail infrastructure, told the train that eventually rear-ended the other to restart its planned journey, Mr. Puente said, “despite there being another train ahead of it.”
The train that was hit from behind was believed to have received instructions from traffic operators to continue, he said, but for unknown reasons it did not proceed.
The moving train then hit the stationary train.
“And that is the origin of the accident that has taken place,” Mr. Puente said, adding that the moving train should have been stopped according to protocol.
Mr. Puente also said that the driver of an uninvolved train tried to warn the control center of the dangers when its operators greenlit the rear train’s resumption of its journey. That driver told the control center operator that the uninvolved train should proceed at lower-than-normal speeds. The operator, Mr. Puente said, acknowledged his error. “Oh, yes,” the operator replied.
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