Adif ran Urda line for months despite derailment warnings

Adif authorised emergency sleeper replacement at Urda on 28 March 2023 — three years and seven months before the fatal derailment of 28 October — after its own documents warned that failing track fastenings could "lead to a derailment" on one of the corridor's most heavily used sections, in service for more than 30 years.

An internal Adif report, reviewed by Sur in English, states plainly: "The fastening is a safety component, the widespread failure of which could have extremely serious consequences for railway operations. There is a tendency for the track gauge to widen on the affected sections, which in turn could lead to a derailment."

Despite that assessment, Adif never suspended services on the Toledo-province section. It imposed a temporary speed restriction in December 2022 and spent four months trialling low-cost fixes while hundreds of thousands of passengers continued to travel through Urda.

What did the inspections find?

Staff at the Mora maintenance depot found that fewer than half of the track fastenings met the torque values needed to keep rails properly secured. "Under 50 per cent of the fastenings met the required tightening torque values," the document states.

The fault ran deep into the infrastructure. Sleeper sleeves were pulling away from the surrounding concrete, and bolts no longer exerted the pressure required on the components securing the rail. The result was gauge widening — a direct derailment mechanism.

Adif's first response was retightening. It failed. "Retightening failed to achieve the required tightening torque values," the report records. "A few weeks after retightening, the torque value had dropped back to its previous level or even lower." The situation was worse than before the intervention. Trains kept running.

Why did trains keep running?

Adif then tried replacing one in every three sleepers. Engineers ruled the method out: removing a single sleeper forced crews to move adjacent sleepers and disturb their damaged fixings, risking permanent damage, and the partial intervention slowed the work. "This is a temporary solution that does not guarantee the security of the system," the report acknowledges.

Traffic still was not suspended. A technical note dated February 2023 went the other way, proposing to raise the speed limit to 160 km/h, subject to close monitoring of track geometry and fastenings.

The report frames the March emergency measures against that background: "Due to the situation described above, which poses a serious risk to rail traffic, it is not possible to wait for an urgent procurement procedure to be processed."

Who signed, and what did it cost?

María Luisa Domínguez, then chair of Adif Alta Velocidad, signed off the emergency works on 28 March 2023. Raquel Sánchez was Minister for Transport at the time, preceding Óscar Puente. The approval came three days before Iryo launched commercial services to Seville, Cordoba and Malaga on 31 March 2023. Ouigo joined the Andalucía corridor in January 2025.

Adif had warned internally, on the eve of those launches, that liberalisation would cause wear on the infrastructure to skyrocket — new private operators added services to Renfe's on the same track through Urda that Adif had already flagged as needing renewal.

The emergency works were authorised at 17,325,000 euros excluding VAT: 6.3 million for sleeper supply to Prefabricaciones y Contratas and more than eleven million for works carried out by Comsa. The civil engineering contract set an eleven-month timeframe from the start date, formalised by minutes of meeting or written order.

In total, the order covered the replacement of 76,500 sleepers — the permanent fix Adif adopted only after retightening and partial sleeper replacement had failed to arrest the deterioration. The section where the October tragedy occurred combined ageing track with an outdated LZL protection system whose failure forced the manual control that preceded the accident. Whether the 2023 renewal programme closed the risk in time is now the central question for investigators.