October 30, 2026
By Ángeles Maestro Martín

Maestro is a former member of the Spanish parliament in the 1990s and currently a spokesperson for the Coordination of Communist Cells (CNC) in the Spanish state. She wrote this article Oct. 29, 2026, a day after the train crash that killed at least 69 people as of Oct. 30 and injured a hundred more. The International Action Center includes the footnotes for this article in Spanish. Translation: John Catalinotto.

Capitalism in crisis relentlessly subjects all social spaces and relationships capable of yielding profits to its goals of accumulating profits. The process unfolds covertly and silently — until tragedy strikes. Today saw a collision between two trains — an AVE [public] and another operated by the private company Iryo — leaving nearly a hundred dead; this comes nine months after a similar accident that also claimed several dozen lives.

The long history of  Renfe’s privatization 

The search for scapegoats is an attempt to avoid the black hole that swallows up all those politically responsible: the privatization of Renfe [the state-run railroad].

The privatization of rail transport began more than 20 years ago. One after another, European Union directives — faithful to the interests of the oligarchies the EU represents — pushed for the “liberalization of transport” and the “opening up to free competition.”[1]

The architecture of privatization rested on the obligation imposed on member EU countries to “separate and maintain independent governance between infrastructure managers (ADIF) and service operators (such as Renfe, Ouigo, or Iryo) to ensure equitable and non-discriminatory treatment of all companies.”  This separation meant that the state, as the infrastructure manager, shouldered the bulk of the debt, while liberalization led to a disproportionate increase in train traffic — with the resulting wear and tear on tracks and safety systems — which should have called for more frequent maintenance and inspections[2].

The separation from the operators of ADIF, a public enterprise, does not imply direct public management of the infrastructure or regulation of rail traffic. On the contrary, there is a dense network of subcontractors — all financed with public funds — that carry out the various activities, while pocketing the profits generated by the overexploitation of workers.

The so-called liberalization of rail transport, closely linked to the tourism boom, has taken place in a manner that has violated all safety limits. According to a report by the National Securities Market Commission, between 2019 and 2024, train traffic increased by 46% on the same infrastructure that — as in the case of the Madrid–Seville AVE — was built for the 1992 Olympic celebrations in Barcelona.

Alarms regarding safety issues were triggered more frequently[3], but it was impossible to halt one of the infrastructure systems most directly linked to tourism — the goose that lays the golden eggs of the national economy.

The hardest people to fool were the workers. They knew from experience that in the privatization process, in order for capital to turn a profit, hard-won social and labor gains had to be dismantled, and that — regarding workplace accidents — safety measures had to be scaled back to boost profits.

Throughout the 1990s, the unions organizing within Renfe — especially the Workers’ Confederation (CCOO) and General Confederation of Labor (CGT) — repeatedly denounced the Socialist Party (PSOE) and People’s Party (PP) governments for implementing policies that led to the company’s decapitalization[4], a fact for which they later blamed the workers[5]. The capitalists [false] narrative was the same as always: The public sector doesn’t work, workforces with labor rights don’t work hard enough, and private capital is more efficient.

In 2000, under the PP government, and exactly one day before a major nationwide demonstration took place in Madrid against the privatization of Renfe — organized primarily by CCOO and CGT, which held a majority on the works council — the CCOO leadership dismissed the union’s leadership in the railway sector and appointed an interim committee. Capital needed to remove obstacles, and the CCOO union bureaucracy obediently acted against its own members.

Over the years, although the workers’ capacity to exert internal pressure has been undermined, complaints from all unions regarding the glaring lack of safety measures — confirmed by increasingly serious accidents — have continued to surface. The governments’ response has been to try to blame the workers for the accidents, while refusing to pay attention to their demands. Twelve days ago, the train engineers’ union denounced the failure to implement the safety measures agreed upon after the accident nine months ago and had called for a 24-hour strike scheduled to take place Oct. 29, one day after Wednesday’s tragedy Oct. 28[6].

Israeli companies control railway security

ADIF has subcontracted railway security services to the Israeli company I-SEC (a subsidiary of ICTS founded by former agents of the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency)[7]. This Israeli company also provides “security” to a large number of public facilities, such as the Bilbao airport[8]. Another Israeli company, CYLUS — whose Advisory Board includes Isabel Pardo de Vera[9], former president of ADIF — and which is linked to the French company Thales —  also has contracts with ADIF related to railway cybersecurity.

As this article is being written, the as-yet-unanswered questions are ruling out the oft-cited “human error” as the immediate cause of the tragedy and pointing instead to an “incomprehensible” chain of failures in the safety systems.

All governments responsible for preventable rail deaths

All governments of the Kingdom of Spain, from the 1990s to the present, have been responsible for implementing privatization decisions, including, most notably, the unjustifiable introduction of high-speed rail. One after another, EU directives — which serve the same oligarchies — pushed in the same direction.

The disaster that British governments — both Conservative and Labor — caused with the privatization of rail transport is repeating itself. Here, moreover, the scale of the tragedy is compounded by the absurd implementation of high-speed lines, which can only be explained by the massive corruption that accompanied it.

The squandering of public funds, bribes, and illegal financing[10] — in this case involving the PSOE — have paved a path that today, once again, is stained with blood. Behind most of the kickbacks was the German company Siemens, one of the main users of slave labor from Nazi concentration camps[11], including Spanish prisoners at the Mauthausen camp [near Linz, Austria].

Political responsibility for the privatization of Renfe — the root cause of these disasters and those yet to come — is therefore shared by the PP and PSOE governments, as well as their coalition partners, first Unidas Podemos[12] and later Sumar.

It should be added that the strategy is the same for all public services and that, although they have their lackeys carrying out the orders within the governments, those who pull the strings sit on the boards of directors of investment funds, banks, and multinational corporations.

Same criminal grip caused preventable tragedies

Today, the blood of the dead is still warm and the tragedy dominates the headlines, but the structural violence of capitalism — which has now exploded with such virulence — is the same daily violence that silently creeps alongside us.

It is this same criminal hand that silently crushes those on [medical] waiting lists whose diagnoses come too late, the kids who “fail,” the workers who, after an interminable shift, arrive exhausted at homes that don’t deserve the name home, those who are evicted, and the youth who try to numb the anguish of realizing they have no future.

Neither accidents, nor premature deaths, nor shattered lives happen by chance. Capitalism is the root cause of all preventable human suffering, which manifests itself in various forms but shares a common root: the subordination of all social relations to the pursuit of profit.

And it is futile to think that the problems of housing, transportation, healthcare, or education can be solved in isolation, without breaking the power that keeps the system running.

The tragedy — whether hidden or violently visible — of the destruction of human vitality makes it all the more urgent to build the necessary forces to establish social ownership of the means of production and strategic enterprises, under workers’ control. But the increasingly urgent goal of putting an end to the savage irrationality of capitalism and building socialism will be a vain illusion unless we work toward building the Communist Party.

Notes:

[1]    https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ES/ALL/?uri=uriserv%3AOJ.L_.2016.352.01.0001.01.SPA

[2]    https://www.elsaltodiario.com/tren-de-alta-velocidad/accidente-adamuz-pone-duda-modelo-ferroviario-velocidad-liberalizacion-falta-fiscalizacion

[3]    https://www.antena3.com/noticias/economia/sindicatos-denuncian-que-empresas-subcontratadas-adif-tienen-suficiente-preparacion_20260128697a2f765e42f97d78444ba6.html

[4]    https://www.servimedia.es/noticias/ccoo-pide-cese-direccion-renfe/1410782950

[5]    https://www.servimedia.es/noticias/ccoo-pide-dimision-presidenta-renfe-seis-directivos-supuestas-practicas-antisindicales/1410854946

‘    “The CCOO Federal Transportation Council dissolved the union’s railway sector leadership bodies — which were controlled by the critical faction — and appointed an interim management committee. https://elpais.com/diario/2000/02/29/economia/951778802_850215.html

[6]    https://www.semaf.org/informaciones/huelga-grupo-renfe-29-octubre/

[7]    https://xornal21.com/art/64648/cgt-solicita-a-renfe-la-suspension-del-contrato-con-una-empresa-vinculada-con-israel

[8]   This Zionist company’s control of the Bilbao airport is reportedly linked to the deployment of Ertzantza riot police upon the arrival of the second flight carrying passengers from the Flotilla. https://www.elsaltodiario.com/israel/una-filial-israeli-icts-vigila-17-instalaciones-publicas-vascas-factura-14-5-millones-2019

[9]    Ana Pardo de Vera, in addition to serving as president of ADIF during Pedro Sánchez’s first administration, was Secretary of State for Transportation during his second administration, until 2023. As of June 2026, she has been charged with five crimes in the “face masks” case. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Pardo_de_Vera

[10]  https://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/1998/abril/08/nacional/nacional.html

[11]  https://www.eldiario.es/el-holocausto-espanol/hitler-concentracion-deportado-mauthausen-gusen-ravensbrueck-franco_132_1159397.html

[12]  High-speed rail liberalization in 2021.  Ouigo (a subsidiary of the French state-owned company SNCF) began operations on May 11, 2021, on the Madrid-Barcelona corridor.

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