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“Since the high-speed line was built, 30-something years ago, we never had any problems, it worked perfectly and was fantastic,” says Alberto Montavez Montes, a shop-owner opposite Córdoba city hall, where the Spanish and Andalusian flags have been hanging at half-mast.

Now, though things feel different: “It’s not that there’s psychosis, but it does make you just a bit reluctant to get on a train, without a doubt.”

In just a few tragic days since two high-speed trains collided in this southern region of Spain, with the loss of 45 lives, it has felt that Spain’s much-vaunted rail system has been thrown into a sudden, deep crisis.

Second only to China in scale, Spain has 3,900 km (2,400 miles) of high-speed (AVE) rail and until now its national network has been admired for its efficiency and safety.

In 2009, then-US president Barack Obama singled out Spain for praise when he outlined a vision for the creation of a high-speed rail network across America. The line connecting Madrid and Seville “is so successful that more people travel between those cities by rail than by car and airplane combined”, he said.

At the time a Spanish-led consortium had just begun work on a high-speed link across the Saudi Arabian desert, confirming the country’s status as a rail superpower.

That reputation has been humbled this week.

Last Sunday, the back three carriages of a train run by private Italian operator Iryo derailed at high speed, along a straight stretch of track, into the path of an oncoming train run by national rail operator Renfe which bore the brunt of the crash.

Two days later, a trainee driver was killed when a wall collapsed on to a suburban rail line near Barcelona in the north-east after heavy rainfall, derailing a train.

The same day another local train in Catalonia hit a rock, although nobody was injured.

And on Thursday, several passengers on a narrow-gauge train suffered minor injuries when a crane struck a carriage.

Train drivers in Catalonia refused to work in the wake of the accident near Barcelona, demanding safety guarantees and contributing to two days without local rail services in the region.

Separately, train drivers’ union Semaf has called a nationwide strike for three days in February over what it has described as “the constant deterioration of the rail network”.

In addition, several high-speed lines have had their speed limits temporarily reduced, due to safety concerns.

Throughout the week, delays, stoppages and other incidents affecting the rail system over recent months have been pored over in the media, while members of the public have aired grievances on social media about uncomfortable or alarming travel experiences.

“I think the trains aren’t as safe as before,” says Olga Márquez, another resident of Córdoba. Her husband regularly travels to Madrid for work, on the same line on which the high-speed collision took place, and she says he has often mentioned vibrations and noises during the journey which suggested to her the track was not in optimum state.

“I’m happy to get on a train, but when it comes to my husband, all this makes me think twice,” she says.

A long delay between the high-speed crash and the rail and rescue services’ realisation that two trains – rather than just one – had been involved has created doubts about the emergency response to such tragedies.

The government, the civil guard and an independent commission all continue to investigate the Andalusia crash, although sabotage and human error appear to have been ruled out.

Meanwhile politicians, commentators, and ordinary Spaniards have been debating the possible cause as well as highlighting weaknesses in Spain’s overall rail system.

The amount of investment the rail network receives has come under particular scrutiny. The Socialist-led government has sought to dismiss such queries, pointing out, for example, that €700m (£605m) has been invested in updating the Madrid-Andalusia line in recent years, with the stretch of track where the accident took place included in that renovation.

“We’re not looking at a problem of lack of maintenance, we’re not looking at a problem of obsolete [infrastructure], and we’re not looking at a problem of lack of investment,” said the transport minister Óscar Puente.

A preliminary report by rail accident investigation commission CIAF has found that grooves found on the wheels of the derailed Iryo train and three earlier trains suggests that a fracture in the track occurred before the Iryo train went over it.

Urging caution, Puente said he suspected “a problem that we have never seen on our network before.”

Figures released by his ministry show a sharp increase in maintenance spending on the rail system since Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez took office in 2018. However, other data tells a different story: Spain was bottom of an index published by German railway association Allianz pro Schiene of spending per capita on rail infrastructure by 14 European countries in 2024.

Salvador García-Ayllón, head of the civil engineering department at Cartagena’s University-Polytechnic, described the high-speed network as being “the jewel in the crown of Spanish infrastructure”.

However, the liberalisation of the rail sector in 2020, allowing France’s Ouigo and Italy’s Iryo to provide high-speed services, may have increased competitivity and reduced ticket prices, but it has also put more pressure on the system.

Around 22 million travellers currently use Spain’s high-speed trains each year, around double the number prior to the liberalisation, and 17 times the number of users in 1992, the year the Madrid-Seville line was inaugurated.

Salvador García-Ayllón also points to new lines which have been built over recent years – including the north-western region of Galicia and the northern city of Burgos, with a new route along the Mediterranean under construction – whose upkeep presents a challenge. All of this, he said, has left Spanish rail “bursting at the seams”.

“The challenge is not just to buy a Ferrari, you have to take the Ferrari to the garage,” he said. “You have to invest in maintaining the infrastructure you have.”

The high-speed rail system’s reliability has dropped noticeably in recent years. In July of 2025, its trains were 19 minutes late on average, according to data provided by Renfe. Local rail has also seen a rise in incidences, such as delays, cancellations and technical problems, which have more than tripled since 2019 on the Madrid local Cercanías network.

Catalonia, which suffered the double accident on Tuesday, has had longstanding and well-documented deficiencies in its suburban Rodalies network, which have fed into its political tensions with Madrid over the last decade.

Perhaps inevitably, the recent tragedies have already spilled into the deeply divided political arena.

Far-right party Vox has said that “travelling in Spain [by train] is no longer safe”, a claim that fits into its repeated insistence that the country is akin to a failed state. The main opposition People’s Party (PP), meanwhile, has accused the government of hiding information about the high-speed crash.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has acknowledged that the accident in southern Spain caused “irreparable” damage. Yet he also insisted that the high-speed network “is the cause of pride for the country”. Not so long ago, few Spaniards would have queried that assertion. Now, many will find it hard to agree.