Spain's Sánchez faces political test as deadly train crash casts shadow over election campaign

MADRID (AP) — Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez hoped to leverage widespread discontent over unaffordable housing when he called snap elections in October. Then a high-speed train rammed into another, killing 69 people and casting a pall over the nation.

It was Spain's second deadly rail collision this year and couldn't have come at a worse time for Sánchez.

With the campaign officially underway, the 54-year-old progressive is working to keep the tragedy from derailing his message to voters. Instead, he has projected his administration as willing to assume responsibility for errors on its watch. More than that, he has folded the disaster into his campaign's main message: that a right-wing government would be worse for Spaniards, who need government help for housing, healthcare, infrastructure and more.

“If there is one lesson to be drawn from the Urda rail tragedy, it is that public services matter,” Sánchez wrote on X after the collision. “This is what is at stake.”

It may be a tough sell. Until this year, there had never been a fatal crash on Spain’s dedicated high-speed lines, and analysts told The Associated Press that the lethal crashes won't be so easy to downplay.

On the morning of Oct. 28, Sánchez was putting a message of positivity onto social media:

“There are so many reasons to be optimistic in this country. We respond to the haters with data, intelligence and humor.”

Minutes earlier, as he would soon learn, a high-speed train south of Madrid slammed into a stationary one, leaving authorities searching for dozens of bodies in the wreckage.

Even so, in recent weeks he has kept an uplifting tone, especially in his speeches while sporting red T-shirts emblazoned with aspirational slogans: “The Strength of Love,” “The Strength of the People,” and “Vote with Strength.” He spoke at his campaign kick-off event Thursday night in Seville, hours before the official midnight start.

The Spanish leader has also tried to invigorate his campaign by pointing to recent elections in Brazil, where leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured reelection with a come-from-behind victory in a runoff, and in the U.S. where Democrats seized control of the Senate and the House.

“It has happened in Brazil, it has happened in the United States, and it will happen in Spain too. The key is mobilization,” he said in an interview with newspaper La Vanguardia this week.

A Spanish prime minister is elected by Parliament, needing an absolute majority in the first vote or a simple majority in the second, often relying on coalition agreements or support from other parties.

Sánchez’s strategy is to “instill a sense of hope, the idea that things can be reversed, that change is possible — and, by doing so, to launch a campaign of optimism and foster a positive outlook,” said Alejandro Quiroga, a professor of political science at Madrid’s Complutense University.

On Monday, the Brazilian president will visit Spain and lend his support to the Socialist’s campaign. It’s unclear how much the Spanish leader will benefit from basking in the reflected glory of a foreign leader; analysts including Quiroga and Sánchez’s party officials themselves acknowledge that the 2 1/2-week campaign will be dominated by domestic concerns, such as housing, immigration and corruption — and last month’s deadly crash.

Six days after the rail accident, Sánchez’s transport minister Óscar Puente stepped down. He did so at the tail-end of a parliamentary grilling about his administration of the country's high-speed rail network, the second largest in the world after China's.

At every turn since, Sánchez and his top officials have pointed to the minister's resignation as proof that the government is accountable.

“We have stepped forward with absolute transparency,” Sánchez wrote soon after on X, calling the minister's move an “act of dignity.”

Sánchez himself was notably absent at a state funeral held this week in central Spain for the crash's victims, perhaps due to the potential for volatile scenes at the service attended by mourning family members of the dead.

But ordinary Spanish voters have shorter memories, and Sánchez appears to be counting on that, according to Quiroga. Still, his right-wing opponents are sure to make the two crashes a central topic of their campaigns and debates, as they undercut Sánchez's arguments about his record.

“There is a sense of public shock, compounded by the nature of these accidents,” said Montserrat Nebrera, former conservative politician and political analyst. “It points to a failure in management over the last eight years.”

Several opinion polls conducted before and after the Oct. 28 train crash showed Sánchez’s Socialist Party behind the combined support of the conservative Popular Party and far-right Vox.

On Wednesday, a nationwide protest over soaring rents and home costs drew over 100,000 people to the streets of Spain's major cities. It was well-timed for Sánchez, bringing the national conversation back to Spain’s housing woes on the eve of the campaign.

The demonstration was part of a general strike — the first in 14 years in Spain — and the first whose main driver was born from frustrations over housing.

While Sánchez’s Socialist Party did not organize or participate in the strike, his government praised the effort. Affordability issues are traditionally more favorable to left-wing politics and he has sought to appease housing activists who, since the dramatic eviction of an 87-year-old woman, have been protesting regularly.

Right-wing parties' rejection of Sánchez's two proposed emergency housing decrees served as the trigger for him to call the early general election, on Nov. 29. His government on Thursday passed one of them through a smaller interim parliament.

Sánchez and his allies hope the move shows Spanish people that he's working on their behalf, and that the Popular Party's promise to repeal the decree if it takes power will help motivate voters.

“Yesterday, the right to housing won on the street and in workplaces, and I hope it will win again at the ballot box,” Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez told lawmakers after its passage.

Protesters use a metal fence to try to force their way into an Apple Store during clashes following a nationwide general strike in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Burning dumpsters are reflected in the damaged window of a storefront during clashes following a protest as part of a nationwide general strike in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Spain's Prime Minister and Socialist Party (PSOE) Secretary-General Pedro Sánchez arrives for a campaign kickoff rally in Seville, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (Rocío Ruz/Europa Press via AP)

Spain's Prime Minister and Socialist Party (PSOE) Secretary-General Pedro Sánchez arrives for a campaign kickoff rally in Seville, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026. (Rocío Ruz/Europa Press via AP)

“Complete and utter nonsense.” That's how Australia captain Pat Cummins responded to Usman Khawaja's claim that the entire team was in on the ball-tampering plot that became known as “Sandpapergate” and rocked cricket in 2018.

Cummins staged an extraordinary news conference Friday at the Sydney Cricket Ground, hours ahead Australia’s home-season opening one-day international against England in Perth, to address the allegations published this week in his longtime teammate's autobiography.

He opened the packed news conference by saying he was prepared to stay and answer questions all day if needed, because he wanted to draw a line under the sorry saga. Based on a subsequent response from David Warner, that's unlikely.

In the immediate aftermath of a Cricket Australia investigation into the cheating attempt three players received unprecedented bans — Steve Smith and Warner, then captain and vice-captain, for 12 months; Cameron Bancroft, who was caught on camera using sandpaper on the ball, for nine months.

The episode has remained so divisive that even eight years later the innuendo and acrimony will mean Cummins' comments in a 70-minute live stand-up will not end questions over who knew what and when.

Cummins, who was part of the bowling attack in that test at Cape Town against South Africa, accused Khawaja of being “casual” and “flippant” by suggesting everyone in the locker room was aware of the sandpaper plot.

“When he says we all knew, if by that he means that we knew sandpaper was going out in the field, he’s 100% wrong,” Cummins said. “I’ve said that consistently for the last eight years. I did not know that was happening.

“But I think Usman actually says things that are actually far more serious than that. He says that I and others were architects of a scheme to ball tamper with sandpaper. That’s complete and utter nonsense.”

Khawaja said he published his account of the episode in a bid to support the three players who he believed had been made scapegoats for the team.

He's had public support from Warner, who responded on social media that the Cricket Australia investigation at the time was rushed and botched. Warner and Smith resumed their international careers in 2019 and remained key players for Australia. Warner retired in 2024, and Smith is still in the squad.

In a live preview on a TV commentary panel for Kayo Cricket ahead of the Australia-England ODI, Warner said he felt like Cummins “threw Uzzy under the bus and I’m very disappointed by that.”

Warner said the players who were in the team in 2018 will have different opinions.

“At the end of the day, Pat’s not going to agree with me, I’m not going to agree with him,” Warner said. “He’s obviously spoken about what he thinks about Uzzy’s book, but I stand by Uzzy and his comments.

“For me it’s about accepting the truth, and I just don’t think this will rest.”

The management has been overhauled. Head coach Darren Lehmann was replaced after the South Africa series by Justin Langer, who was succeeded by Andrew McDonald in 2022. Veteran wicketkeeper Tim Paine replaced Smith as test captain before Cummins took over in 2021.

Cricket Australia has a new chairman and CEO, Todd Greenberg, who has ruled out reopening the Sandpapergate investigation.

The longtime bowling group, including Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon, in 2021 rejected innuendo that everyone was in on the plot to use sandpaper to help make the ball “reverse” — or swing unconventionally through the air. Cummins and Starc have publicly confirmed their version of events again this week.

But in his autobiography, Khawaja said he was sitting beside Bancroft in the locker room when he heard of a plot to tamper with the ball, and urged caution.

Cummins, who was 13 tests into his international career in that Cape Town match, on Friday turned the spotlight back on Khawaja, who retired from international cricket in January after his 88th test match.

“I was genuinely shocked this week when I found out that Usman admitted that he told Cam to be careful when using sandpaper,” Cummins said, adding that Khawaja had been instrumental in helping the Australian squad turn around what he described as a sometimes ugly, win-at-all-costs culture.

“That’s not the Usman that I know. It’s not the Usman that I think has been part of a team that’s helped rebuild the Australian cricket culture over the last eight years,” he said. “And the one that would have stopped that from happening there and then.”

See AP’s full cricket coverage here

FILE - Delhi Capitals' David Warner waves to his fans during the awards ceremony at the end of the Indian Premier League cricket match between Delhi Capitals and Chennai Super Kings in Visakhapatnam, India, March. 31, 2024.(AP Photo/ Surjeet Yadav File)

Australia's captain Pat Cummins, right, tosses a ball to Mitchell Starc, on day four of the third cricket test match between South Africa and Australia, in Cape Town, South Africa, Friday, Oct. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Halden Krog)

Australian men's cricket team captain Pat Cummins speaks in Sydney, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, about the Sandpapergate cheating scandal. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

Australia men’s cricket captain Pat Cummins speaks in Sydney, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, about the Sandpapergate cheating scandal. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

Australian men's cricket team captain Pat Cummins speaks in Sydney, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, about the so-called Sandpapergate cheating scandal. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)