Seventeen tourists now understand that travel is not always a postcard. A train overturn in Spain, a broken track, a moment of chaos. The Foreign Office, predictably, has issued a travel warning.
One wonders why it took a twisted piece of metal for the government to acknowledge that foreign soil is not a theme park. We live in an age of intellectual decadence, where people believe that a train ride through Spanish countryside is a guaranteed pastoral idyll. This is the same mentality that led Romans to believe in the eternal stability of their empire.
History is a cycle of hubris and collapse. A train crash is a minor perturbation, but the mindset that produces such surprised warnings is a symptom of a deeper rot. We expect safety, we demand it, and we are shocked when the universe reminds us that it is indifferent.
The real story is not the overturned train. It is the fact that we have become a nation of sheltered tourists, unable to process the basic unpredictability of existence. Let this be a lesson: travel with caution, or stay home and contemplate your own fragility.
