More than 10,000 passengers in Spain experienced severe disruption on Sunday after cable lines were stolen at several points within the province of Toledo and a train suffered a technical fault.
Travellers relying on more than 30 trains between Madrid and Seville were affected. Many were returning from trips over the bank holiday weekend.
Minister of Transport Óscar Puente described the incident as “a serious act of sabotage” and called for the public to help identify those responsible.
The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, claimed that Spain was suffering a “daily calamity”, appearing to link the travel delays to last week’s historic power outage.
The disruption has lasted for several hours, with Renfe’s customer service team updating commuters on Monday morning that trains to Madrid and Andalusia began operating at 9:48 am. “Service should return to normal throughout the day,” InfoRenfe posted on X.
Renfe’s president, Álvaro Fernández de Heredia, said that a train’s technical fault was responsible for the majority of the delays, rather than the cable theft.
The theft, detected at around 5:45 pm, was initially located between the Toledo municipalities of Mora, Orgaz and Urda. The Ministry of Transport then confirmed that the damage was concentrated between Los Yébenes and Manzaneque, affecting the signalling installations of the railway line and causing significant delays in long-distance, high-speed and AVANT trains.
Fernández de Heredia said that the last 10 affected trains should be restored by 2:30 am on Monday, with repair works continuing through the night. The Guardia Civil is investigating the incident, which involved four different incidents within a 10-kilometre radius.
Affected passengers have criticised that an alternative had not been arranged ahead of passengers boarding the trains to prevent them from spending hours trapped in the carriages, and many complained of being left in the dark about the situation.
Some passengers also complained about being trapped for hours on end without food or adequate water supplies being provided.
A technical issue aggravated the situation
In addition to the cable theft, Fernández de Heredia said that a “snag” in the overhead lines by a train owned by the company Iryo worsened the situation. This caused further disruption after the trains began to move at low speed following the sabotage.
Early on Monday morning, the Renfe president responded to criticism from affected travellers on social media, clarifying the role of two separate issues. He claimed that the cable theft only caused delays of up to an hour, and blamed the technical fault affecting the Iryo train for the lengthy disruption experienced by passengers beyond that.
On Monday morning, high-speed services between Madrid and Seville and between Madrid and Toledo underwent timetable adjustments, with delays of up to one hour as repair works went on.
The Ministry of Transport reiterated its commitment to work closely with the authorities to investigate the issue and prevent further similar incidents.
