Spanish composer Marisa Manchado, who received Spain's National Music Prize in 2024, was among those killed in the train accident at Urda, in the province of Toledo, on 28 October, Codalario reports. She was 70.
The Madrid Association of Composers (AMCC) confirmed her death in a statement, saying the news had been verified and describing her as one of the victims of the crash. Several Spanish outlets, including Scherzo, El País, El Mundo and La Vanguardia, had earlier reported her death or her disappearance in the accident.
Why it matters
Manchado's death removes one of the most visible figures in Spanish contemporary music at a moment when her career was drawing wide attention. Her opera La Regenta, staged in 2023 with a libretto by philosopher Amelia Valcárcel adapted from Clarín's novel, brought her the National Music Prize in the composition category the following year.
Her influence extended well beyond her own scores. She helped open the field of gender studies in Spanish musicology, championed women composers in broadcasting, publishing and programming, and co-founded the AMCC, which she led as its first president.
A life across composition, research and teaching
Born María Luisa Manchado Torres in 1956, Manchado worked simultaneously in several areas, as the AMCC's statement sets out: artistic creation, music research, education, feminist outreach and professional organising.
Her catalogue was broad. According to the association, she wrote chamber and symphonic music, electroacoustic works, vocal pieces and opera. Among her stage works it lists El cristal de agua fría, with a libretto by writer Rosa Montero, and Escenas de la vida cotidiana, alongside La Regenta.
She was also a long-serving educator, teaching at the Teresa Berganza Professional Conservatory of Music in Madrid, where she served as deputy director. Between 2007 and 2008 she held a public cultural management post as deputy director general of music and dance at INAEM, Spain's national institute for the performing arts and music. She completed a doctorate in musicology, with research on the Laboratorio de Informática y Electrónica Musical.
On the day of the accident she was travelling to Seville to take part in a meeting organised by the Faculty of Education Sciences at the University of Seville, the AMCC said — one engagement in a busy schedule that had followed the national prize.
Building institutions and recovering a history
Manchado's organising work began in February 1998, when she chaired the first board of the newly created AMCC at a meeting at the Hotel Suecia in Madrid. Enrique Igoa served as vice-president, José Luis Carles as secretary and Juan Pagán as treasurer, with José Luis Turina, Mercedes Zavala, Jacobo Durán-Loriga, Pilar Jurado and Zulema de la Cruz as board members. Manchado led the association until 2000.
The association says that period laid the groundwork for the COMA Festival, first held in 1999 and still part of Madrid's musical calendar 28 years later.
Her commitment to women in music ran in parallel. From the 1980s she promoted initiatives including the radio programme Mujeres en la música, took part in organising the International Women's Music Showcases in Madrid, and in 1998 edited Música y mujeres, género y poder, which the AMCC describes as a reference work in Spanish feminist research. In 2023 she published ¡Mis queridas genias!, a tribute to the women composers who had influenced her.
The association said her aim in recovering women's musical memory was not only to correct a historical wrong but to give younger generations figures to look to. It also recalled "a woman of intense, restless personality, committed, capable of defending her convictions and opening paths where there were barely any precedents" — a description it offered in its own statement.
The AMCC said its members would remember above all the colleague who believed composers needed to organise and work collectively, and that her legacy reaches past her scores to the place she helped secure for other women musicians and voices.
The circumstances of the Urda crash itself, including the total number of victims, have not been detailed in the reporting summarised here. Further official information on the accident is expected as investigations proceed.
