At least 69 people have died in the Urda rail disaster, prompting Spain to declare three days of official mourning. On Wednesday, 28 October, an Iryo high-speed train and a Renfe AVE collided on the Madrid-Seville line near Urda, Toledo, shortly before 9am. The trains were carrying about 550 passengers and crew. The collision occurred around eight kilometres from Urda’s urban centre. On Saturday, 31 October, the Partido Popular’s official account on X addressed Pedro Sánchez and urged him to avoid his customary cultural recommendations.
“Hoy es sábado pero seguimos de luto. Que no se te ocurra recomendar un libro o subir una puñetera canción, Pedro. QUE NO SE TE OCURRA,” the party wrote. It cited the mourning period as the reason for telling the prime minister not to recommend a book or upload a song. Sánchez had made no new cultural post before the warning. Royal Decree 949/2026 formalised the three days of mourning, which ran from midnight on 28 October through midnight on 31 October. The decree ordered the national flag to fly at half-mast at public buildings. It also covered Spanish diplomatic and consular premises abroad, as well as Navy ships.
The PP’s criticism follows earlier disputes over the timing of the prime minister’s social media posts. The party had also said it would observe the three days of mourning before pressing Sánchez over political responsibility for the crash, as earlier coverage reported.
The most recent earlier example came on the day of the Urda accident. At 9.11am on Wednesday, 28 October, about 15 minutes after news of the collision emerged, Sánchez posted a clip from an interview with the Keep It Cutre podcast. Its caption said there were many reasons to be optimistic about Spain and urged people to answer critics with data, drawing on intelligence and humour. Vox politician Jorge Buxadé criticised the timing, accusing Sánchez of showing no empathy while the country faced another tragedy.
By 30 October, the Centro Integrado de Datos put the provisional death toll at 69. It said 36 victims had been identified and 27 families formally notified. Forensic teams in Toledo and Ciudad Real had completed autopsies on all 69 people. Thirty-four people remained hospitalised, while recovery and identification operations continued. Early casualty figures changed as victims were recovered and identified; a regional report attributed 44 of the initial 68 deaths to passengers on the Iryo train. The other 24 were on the Renfe AVE.
Sánchez has used weekend posts to recommend books and music. In July 2026, while major wildfires affected several autonomous communities, he posted a TikTok video recommending El imperio de la inteligencia artificial, Karen Hao’s account of power in OpenAI and the technology industry. The post also featured Placebo’s “Bionic” from the project RE.
In August, amid protests in Ceuta over the government’s handling of the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants, Sánchez shared three summer reading choices on TikTok. One was Comerás flores, a novel by Lucía Solla. He also recommended Laura Pérez’s comic Nocturnos. His third choice was Mark Leonard’s essay The Age of Unpeace. On 12 September, more than 40 days after the arrivals from Morocco, he returned to his weekly TikTok recommendations with Interpol’s album The Other Side of Make-Believe. He also recommended Stuart Russell’s book Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control.
On 19 October, during the pre-election period and after the passage of dana Adam, which killed four people, Sánchez posted a link on X to Where Is Gone?, a collaboration between Rosalía and Fontaines D.C. Days earlier, during Argentine President Javier Milei’s visit to Madrid, he had shared “Fanático” by Lali Espósito, who has publicly clashed with Milei.
