Right, so the internet's latest whodunit is spinning out a tale of possible Israeli involvement in the recent Spanish rail crash, and so much so, the demands for Israeli influence and involvement in Spain’s rail industry have returned to the fore. The railway workers of Spain are trying to reinstate their old demand to kick out the Israeli-affiliated security contractor you see.
According to La Voz de Galicia, the trade union CGT Galicia had asked rail operator Renfe to end its contract with I-SEC back in June 2025 over Israel’s genocide in Gaza. I-SEC is the Amsterdam-based private security company, which through its parent company, ICTS International, is a security group whose origins CGT traced to former Israeli security personnel, including people connected to Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. That is the Israeli connection behind the workers’ objection. The cause of the accident obviously remains under investigation despite all the blame being thrown around.
Renfe, Spain’s state-run train company, is in the middle of this dispute. I-SEC’s own January 2024 announcement describes three Renfe contracts involving approximately 700 guards, covering station and workshop surveillance, custody of trains and accompanying services. The employees want a different contractor: a company unconnected to Israel. Management therefore faces a clear choice. Should they stick with the existing supplier or find a new one, given the troops so to speak aren’t happy, because nothing says “we condemn genocide” quite like continuing to pay the same contractors connected to Israel.
And if you thought that the Israeli connection was just that though, think again. Cylus is a separate Israeli company that deals in cybersecurity for railways, because there’s nothing like a little military experience to help you on your commute is there?
One of Cylus' founders has been refreshingly honest about their military-to-market connection too. His pitch gives you a sense of how these cozy relationships begin, before the world pretends that everything is just fine.
This is a clip from Cylus's founder and CEO, Miki Shifman, explaining how he and chief executive Amir Levintal came to work together.
The sales pitch is this: Military-grade technology, honed to perfection in Israel’s armed forces and now shrink-wrapped and sold all over the world. It very much leaves a question mark in the public procurement procedure though, as to which foreign friends our government institutions will provide public funding via contracts to.
The workers, to their credit, aren’t messing about here either. They’ve gone straight for the jugular. They want Renfe to end I-SEC’s contract now. That targets the contractor’s income and puts responsibility on the public managers authorising the payments.
The government can weep and make statements about Gaza all it likes, but the place where the money of the public company finally goes is the true test of which foreign partners the government is happy to back.
Moreover, it does not shield anybody from scrutiny this way either, no matter how gushing their resume might be.
It is in the lap of Renfe therefore. It is a choice of the public administrators, with the public money. The workers are not standing round waiting for some minister to express sympathy or concern, they are denouncing the decision itself.
A demand which the Management can’t simply brush off therefore, and what do you know, they have even found a solution to it. They want the contract let again, with the purpose of safeguarding the safety of the trains, and maybe not to award the contract to a man who will have a lot of trouble with the international world.
Cylus provides a different kind of security: rail cybersecurity. It entered the industry through a network of collaborations with various equipment suppliers.
One such supplier is Alstom, a major train manufacturer that partnered with Cylus on railway cybersecurity. Here’s Eddy Thésée, responsible for cybersecurity for Alstom’s products and solutions, including the manufacture of Renfe’s own high speed trains as that has been, explaining that partnership in a corporate interview from 2021:
This is Alstom's advantage: it can embed a supplier in the broader industry across Europe. A major European manufacturer brings a company into the full system of services offered to the public, extending its influence far beyond what a single start-up with just a strong presentation could achieve.
Public institutions must choose the types of relationships they enter into through these larger packages. Buying from a familiar manufacturer does not exempt them from the responsibility of their subcontractors. Nor does delegating technical functions absolve them of the political decision to maintain these relationships.
They have definite roles: I-SEC’s Renfe announcement describes guarding and surveillance services, and says its mission is to protect and control, but also that the wider business provides security technology. Cylus deals exclusively in railway security.
To see why railways were considered a business opportunity for them though, listen to what attracted Shifman's attention to the railways.
This is how the responsibility is allocated to the right office. Supervising a network and commanding a train are different functions. It sharpens the scrutiny but doesn’t disappear into the background behind words like ‘security.’
In one case study, Cylus described a trial of non-intrusive monitoring on the live signalling network of an unnamed European client, following tests in a Madrid laboratory. The client's identity is not specified.
It is clear that when a company celebrates an important contract without revealing who actually paid for it, the public is left in the dark. If you are paying for it, you deserve to know where your money is going, and you deserve a good reply even if you do not like the answer. If a relationship is open to criticism by the people whose institution it supports, it is open.
In his earlier interview Shifman also mentions how a demonstration made him the company’s first railway pilot.
The customer again is unnamed, but entry into this industry depended on the railway bosses' decision to accept the suppliers’ proposal. This makes the individuals who open these doors rather important in which case.
Named connections with the Spanish institutions, however, did arise. In February 2024, Cylus announced that Isabel Pardo de Vera, former president of ADIF and former secretary of state for transport of Spain, had joined the company’s advisory board. ADIF manages the rail network; Renfe manages the trains. So, from her experience, she would bring knowledge of Spain's public transport institutions to the company.
And without further ado, the Cylus Company offered her experience as a valuable asset for their international venture. Well colour me surprised. Those top-notch insights on the operations of public transport in Spain were to be recycled into the pitch of a private firm.
What exactly did she do, what obstacles were set up, and what came next, how many good offices? This revolving door deserves closer scrutiny. It’s one of them again isn’t it? The company raves about its perks; maybe the public should also get a look then? Just a thought.
Pardo de Vera’s own remarks in Cylus’s podcast add an even more immediate dimension to the risk. In the Spanish transcript, she expressed concern about the danger of someone hacking into the railway control systems and causing accidents by making trains collide. She also discussed the outsourcing of maintenance and the dangers of an infected computer being connected to critical services.
The danger she describes is contained in the normal conditions of the work done by the contractors. The public procurer therefore has a duty it cannot delegate: to set up the conditions of access, to check on them, and to know who is responsible when they are not met.
We have not established a Cylus deployment on the Spanish system and have not affirmed the Israelis as responsible for this crash. This makes the system's maintenance, access, and equipment the most crucial element in the investigation and that means that the exact sequence of events must be investigated in its entirety.
So on that basis, ABC has reported on the leaked communications between the control centre and the drivers. Listen to the union’s view of the transcript and to the reports of instructions.
LZB is the train protection system in question. In the event of a malfunction, the fallback measures are forced to compensate for the loss of normal protection.
It is not advisable to leave the railways in the hands of the front-line staff, hoping that they will fill the gaps by miracles. The management has the obligation of procedures and training and working conditions. The philosophy of cheapness must be taken into account here as well, even when human life is at stake.
The controller’s decision has to be examined in light of the data the systems emitted and the procedure followed. The investigation must also identify the people responsible for the conditions of the case.
On the 29th, the CGT Railway Department, in response to public concern over the Atocha trains tation controller, demanded a general review of the organisation, staffing, scheduling, and traffic conditions.
The reaction of the workers, which was extended to a planned safety strike, was also the subject of this report, concerning Sémaf, the train drivers’ union, and the decision taken to continue the strike on October 29.
The workers are organised in the matter of the administration of the line; the Sémaf strike is distinct from the boycott of the CGT of Galicia. But each is based on the fact that the management of the railways, invested with the right to make necessary decisions, is also invested with responsibility for them.
The strike had been announced before this disaster, on October 16; it consisted of the need for better safety on the line, in emergency measures against bad weather, in the hiring and maintenance of the rolling stock; this puts another light on the discontents; the workers were asking for changes in the way the railway functioned. The disaster occurred while the demands remained the object of the industrial struggle.
So an existing record of concerns and commitments already exists. The workers’ statements about the system belong in this account along with instructions given or received in the critical moments. It will be clear what was raised, what was promised, what changed.
And the warning about the investigation is worth taking seriously.
It is true that the term “human error” can sometimes be used as an explanation, but when it is presented as a complete explanation, even before the facts are known, well suddenly things start stinking of a cover-up, or at least the suspicion gets raised even if there is none.
But all of the Israeli connections here are being discussed in the context of a political situation that Benjamin Netanyahu has done a lot to inflame himself.
On April 10th, he charged Spain with having repeatedly undermined Israel’s position, and announced the withdrawal of Spanish representatives from the Israeli Coordination Office in Kiryat Gat. Israel’s farce of an oversight of Gaza.
Netanyahu warned Spain of an immediate price after he called them anti-Israel.
Diplomacy at its finest- about as pleasant as a debt collector interrupting your Sunday dinner.
This order is usually followed by the usual threat of punishment. The public administration of Spain is not there in order to make life easy for Israel. It is their job to answer to the people who pay the bill.
The workers' reaction was all the more pointed in light of this attitude therefore. If the public in those countries should also demand repercussions, it would be through the trading relations that their institutions hold.
The public can demand that a company stop awarding a contract to an Israeli company. A trade union can campaign for that. The Israeli government has no claim to political obedience, though repeatedly expects it and be damned as an antisemite if you don’t bend to their will and Israeli companies have no claim on Spanish public contracts any more than anybody else’s.
So this is where a boycott turns disapproval into a practical move. An official client can take his business elsewhere.
CGT Galicia’s case against I-SEC was already based on a political objection: public funds should not be used to finance an organisation closely related to Israel during a genocide. The crash has made railway security a much more urgent public question, but it did not create the union’s objection to begin with though, it has simply hardened it since.
Renfe management have to meet this challenge. The issue is not the contractor's credentials. The workers are challenging the choice itself.
A real investigation would make public the scope of the contract, the contractor’s ownership, and the reasons for its selection; it should give trade unions a formal role, and include an independent study of access to railway property, oversight, and possible conflicts of interest. The only way to avoid management’s translation of ‘in re-examination’ is to confront the boycott request directly and publicly, set a public deadline for a decision, and explain how the service could be transferred to another contractor without compromising security.
The railway administrations have become dependent on their suppliers, and replacing them is expensive and complicated. The review must also assess whether the state-run operator has the knowledge, information, and commercial power needed to change suppliers; if not, it must publish a plan to acquire it. The notion of public ownership is no longer meaningful if the public institution has lost the practical ability to decide with whom to do business after all.
This kind of dependence is the very reason why public institutions must be able to change suppliers, and must be courageous enough to do so. Public contracts are not supposed to be lifetime subscriptions which the public cannot cancel.
For this crash the commission must inquire into the gear, the access and who was consulted; and for the contract the railways must reply to the workers’ demands. The people who have the records and the purse strings must answer the workers’ question straight out; the public must not be obliged to play detective itself to know where their money has gone.
Those who travelled on that train didn’t all survive. Many of those who did, have suffered irreparable bodily harm; they deserve an explanation that should reach the highest responsible official. Discovering the last orders given to the driver is one thing; discovering how the railways reached this point is another.
But Renfe, as a matter of public policy, should explain why it has maintained this relationship in the midst of a genocide. The CGT’s claim is correct: I-Sec must be dismissed, and the tender to be made, which does not involve a diplomatic miracle, must be made to a company that does not imply such relations with foreign governments. And if Netanyahu mutters about the consequences, well he needs to be shown that his threats can have consequences too.
For more Israeli involvement in too many pies and more and more nations saying enough is enough, do stick with this channel for more such as this story here as your recommended next watch.
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