Train service resumes after major breakdown disrupts commutes for 80,000

All Rodalies short, medium and long-distance trains in Catalonia were halted for three hours on Friday morning between 5am – when service for the day begins – and 8am.

A failure in the telecommunications system caused chaos for commuters, with all services except for high-speed trains halted.

An estimated 80,000 passengers - and 200 trains - were affected, like Marta, who told the Catalan News Agency she worked at a daycare and said she would be late as kids' parents were arriving before her and the "disruptions were unexpected."

Shortly after 8am the service resumed, but trains did not automatically run as usual by that point. Talking to RAC1 radio station, Spanish transport minister Raquel Sánchez said that it would "take hours" for normality to return, adding that "this has never happened before." 

In fact, it was not until midday when Rodalies and other train services recovered their normal schedules. A few minutes after 8am passengers were allowed on the platforms for the first time on Friday.

Adif, the public company in charge of the train infrastructure, said at 8.30am that "an incident has taken place early this morning coinciding with the process of updating the IT systems of the Centralized Traffic Center, which are carried out regularly."

"During these operations, some damage in the IT systems that control the communications has been identified, both the main and the redundant ones."

In the afternoon, the president of the company announced that the failure was due to a hardware breakdown, specifically to some damaged hard drives.

The issue was spotted while doing a hardware update that was scheduled at 1:10 am, but ten minutes later, problems were detected and Rodalies tried to fix them. However, after trying for over one hour, experts decided to change all the equipment and restart the whole system, which was completed by 8:00 am.

Sánchez took to twitter again hours later to apologize and to say that trains had been running as usual since early afternoon, but that works were continuing "to minimize the possible delays that may occur in the next few hours."

Catalonia demands explanations

Pere Aragonès, the president of Catalonia, demands "explanations and guarantees for the future" after the "absolutely unacceptable" breakdown of train services on Friday.

The ERC politician remarked that the situation "has been going on for too long," and argued that the Spanish government "must assume its responsibility" for the severe delays and chaos caused across Catalonia.

The head of the Catalan executive explained that Civil Protection agents, Catalan Mossos d'Esquadra police officers, and local municipal police "coordinated from early in the morning to avoid major incidents on stations and platforms."

The Catalan vice president, Jordi Puigneró, reacted to the news on Catalunya Ràdio station saying that "commuters want Rodalies services to work, not to be free."

From September 1 until the end of the year, commuter trains in Catalonia and across Spain are free, a measure introduced by the Spanish government, in charge of the service, in order to counter inflation.

Puigneró demanded the management of the train infrastructure and the service be transferred from the Spanish to Catalan administrations – this has been a long-standing demand of Catalonia, especially from the 2000s, and it was only partly transferred in 2009.

Yet, the Spanish public company Adif is in charge of the infrastructure, while Renfe, another Spanish government-owned company, manages the service.

For years, Catalonia has also demanded more public investment in renovating stations, tracks, and infrastructure, and on Friday, Spanish minister Raquel Sánchez said that major issues such as the one on Friday are fixed with "more investment."