Spain held a state funeral on Tuesday for the 69 people killed in a high-speed rail collision last month, as relatives gathered at Toledo Cathedral almost two weeks after the disaster.
Royals join grieving families
King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia attended the ceremony and sat near the families of the dead. Residents of the village of Urda, close to the crash site, placed 69 candles near the altar, and a 16th-century sculpture of Christ was brought from Urda for the service, officials said. The funeral Mass was celebrated by the Archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Cerro Chaves, with around 150 relatives of victims and injured passengers in attendance.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez did not attend. He travelled to Catalonia to record a podcast with popular YouTuber Jordi Wild on the same day, a decision that prompted sharp political criticism, though reports established only that the recording was scheduled for the same day, not the extent to which it overlapped with the service. Several government ministers represented the government at the funeral.
The crash and its aftermath
The collision happened on October 28, when a high-speed train slammed into another that was stationary on the Madrid-Seville line near Urda, around 140 kilometres south of Madrid. The cause remains under investigation.
Rail travel in Spain was disrupted on Tuesday by a train drivers’ strike, and the government approved new rail safety measures on the same day. Spain will hold a general election on November 29, in which Sanchez is seeking re-election. The Urda disaster was Spain’s second major railway accident of the year: 46 people died in a crash near Adamuz in Andalusia in January.
Related reading: Urda Train Crash Funeral Thursday in Spain
