The Spanish PM is hit by a succession of crises just weeks before a snap general election.

Image source, ReutersBySarah RainsfordSouthern and Eastern Europe correspondent , Reporting fromToledoPublished2 hours agoThe breaking news from Spain this week was shocking but also shockingly familiar: another collision on the high-speed rail line south from Madrid, with reports of dozens killed.

It is just nine months since two trains crashed near Cordoba, killing 46 people. Now 69 bodies have been recovered here in central Spain, from wreckage strewn over the tracks and down an embankment.

But it is also a national disaster that has shattered confidence in the country's rail network and the Socialist-led government of Pedro Sánchez. It is playing out just weeks before the snap general election he called.

The formal investigation into the Toledo train disaster has only just been launched but the government has been quick to take control of the narrative.

From the first hours after the collision, Transport Minister Oscar Puente began suggesting "human error" was to blame, batting responsibility as far as possible from the cabinet.

On Friday, he appeared before the press for a second time to set out what he called the "objective facts" of the crash and counter a surge of criticism against the government.

The opposition People's Party (PP) is among those calling for his resignation as a "moral" and "ethical" move.

Instead after expressing "huge pain and sadness" for the victims, Puente went on the offensive.

He rejected talk of chronic underinvestment in infrastructure and insisted that Spain's high-speed signalling safety system, the LZB, was neither old nor inadequate: Germany and Austria use the same.

In Spain, it has already failed 170 times so far this year, he revealed, but called that "normal" and around the EU average.

The problem surrounds what happens next - when the system fails and control of the line shifts to manual.

Crucially, at one point a controller instructed a stalled train to restart, clearing it to advance at up to 160km/h (100 mph) even though a second train was stuck on the line up ahead.

The impending collision was clear from audio calls and on big screens in the control centre in Madrid.

"They worked. We checked. They could see what was happening," Puente confirmed. But the advancing train was never ordered to stop.