Why we grieve a train crash but not a refugee shipwreck

These days, Spain finds itself with its heart suspended between two paths.

One is made of iron. Two trains traveling across the landscape of our hurried lives suddenly encountered tragedy in Urda, a small town in Toledo province roughly 100 kilometers south of Madrid.

The collision occurred Oct. 28, 2026, when a Renfe AVE high-speed train struck a train operated by Iryo — a newer private high-speed operator — near the Urda station, with several rear carriages of the Iryo train derailing and some falling into a ravine, as reported by Diario de Tarragona and Euronews.

Damaged carriages, tracks turned into a scene of pain, families waiting for news that no one would ever want to receive.

Sixty-nine people have died. Some injured people remain hospitalized, and forensic teams continue to put names to a sorrow that should never be reduced to a number.

The other path has no rails. It is an immense highway of water that connects and separates continents: the Atlantic.

These days, too, on Nov. 2, a small boat heading toward Lanzarote — one of Spain’s Canary Islands, roughly 100 kilometers off the coast of Morocco and Western Sahara and one of the main entry points for migrants crossing from West Africa — became a small island of suffering.

There were 139 people aboard. Seven died. Only two bodies could be recovered; the other five were reportedly thrown into the sea, according to survivors’ accounts, under circumstances that still need to be clarified.

The vessel was rescued roughly 150 kilometers northeast of Arrecife, Lanzarote’s capital, by Spain’s SalvamentoMarítimo — the state maritime rescue service — with 132 survivors on board, as reported by Moncloa.com and Diario de Avisos.

The same day, Spanish authorities reported more than 400 migrants reaching the Canary Islands across several boats, as reported by Moncloa.com — a reminder that the Atlantic crossing, one of the deadliest migration routes in the world, continues largely out of view.

Two tragedies.

Two paths.

And yet, one question emerges, uncomfortably, amid the news: Do we know how to look at suffering with the same eyes, wherever it comes from?

The solidarity we show, and the solidarity we don’t

In Urda, we have seen the best of ourselves. Emergency services, medical workers, local residents and those who came to help without asking who anyone was or where they came from.

In the face of great disasters, Spain suddenly discovers that beneath our differences runs an undercurrent of fraternity. One hand reaches for another. A door opens. A stranger becomes a brother for a few hours.

The same thing happens at sea.

There are the men and women of Maritime Rescue, navigating toward a point lost in the vastness. There are those who receive survivors at ports, those who provide medical care, listen, translate, and offer a blanket or a glass of water. There, too, is a quiet solidarity that rarely makes the headlines.

But the sea has a strange way of distancing us from what happens on it.

A tragedy on a nearby railway line enters our homes. We can imagine the train we take so often, the seat by the window, the station where someone is waiting. Suffering then has a familiar geography.

A small migrant boat, by contrast, often appears on our screens as a brief phrase: migrants rescued. And we run the risk of forgetting that stories were traveling inside that phrase.

People who may have sold the little they owned to pay for a passage into uncertainty. People with a name, a family, a childhood, a fear and, surely, a dream.

A mother does not grieve differently because her child died among twisted metal or beneath the waves.

Pain has no passport.

A shared fragility

This is not about comparing tragedies or holding a competition in tears. Every death is unique. Every family has the right to grieve. It is about learning something from these days: solidarity is more genuine when it does not choose its victims.

Perhaps we need to hold on to the shock we feel when a train derails so that we can also look toward the other derailment that happens every day at our borders.

The tracks in Urda and the waters of the Atlantic may seem very far apart. But both lead us to the same place: human fragility.

And that is precisely where our responsibility begins.

May we never grow accustomed to accidents or shipwrecks without accountability. May no statistic succeed in erasing a face.

May solidarity be more than a beautiful flash of light when tragedy comes knocking at our door; may it also be a light kept burning for those who suffer far from our windows.

Because there are paths of iron and paths of water.

And along all of them travels, under different names and with different dreams, the same humanity.

This is a translated and edited version of the column that first appeared on Religion Digital and has been republished with permission.