The Madrid–Barcelona high-speed corridor carries about 40,000 passengers a day. On 2 November, Catalan President Salvador Illa said the service should continue while the infrastructure gets necessary upgrades, as long as safety is assured and disruption stays to a minimum.
Transport Minister Óscar Puente has said the government is considering suspending the line for up to two years for modernization and renewal works, reportedly due to begin in 2027. The Ministry had not yet settled how far services would be restricted, or whether they would stop during the works. In an interview with Cadena SER, Illa called for investment and renewals that meet the highest safety standards while affecting the service as little as possible.
Illa defended Puente and the rest of the government’s handling of the Urda rail accident in Toledo. The late-October crash involved an AVE train and an Iryo train. By 2 November, the reported toll had reached at least 69 deaths, with 29 injured people hospitalized in one account. Spain’s independent railway-accident investigation authority, AITAT, opened a technical investigation on 29 October and classified the accident as serious. It said all hypotheses about the cause remained open. A separate judicial investigation was also underway. Illa echoed Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s view that two rail accidents of this scale in one year were unacceptable for Spain. High-speed services between Madrid and Andalusia were suspended after the Urda crash, a separate disruption from the Madrid–Barcelona renewal proposal. Puente’s position after the Urda crash was also covered in an earlier report.
On the transfer of responsibility for the first Rodalies line to the Generalitat, Illa said the priorities had not changed after the accident. Europa Press reported that the Transport Ministry was focused on managing the tragedy, while the planned approach remained unchanged: bring Rodalies governance closer to Catalonia.
