At least 39 dead in Spain after two high-speed trains collide
Written by: Nina Lopez and Michael Francis Gore
ADAMUZ, Spain, January 19 (Reuters) – At least 39 people died when a high-speed train derailed and collided with an opposing train in southern Spain on Sunday night, in one of Europe’s worst rail accidents in the last 80 years.
According to emergency services, 122 people were injured, 12 of whom were in intensive care, in the crash near Adamuz in the province of Cordoba, about 360 km (223 miles) south of Madrid.
“The train tipped over to one side… then everything went dark and all I heard were screams,” said Ana, a young woman who returned to Madrid and was treated at a Red Cross center in Adamuz.
He described how, limping, wrapped in a blanket, his face covered in plaster, he was dragged from the train covered in blood by other passengers. Firefighters rescued his pregnant sister from the rubble and an ambulance took them both to the hospital.
“There were people who were fine and there were people who were very seriously injured. They were in front of you and you knew they were going to die and you couldn’t do anything,” he said.
REMOTE LOCATION MAKES RESCUE DIFFICULT
The rescue operation was complicated by the remote location of the crash in a hilly, olive-growing region. It is only accessible by a single-track road, making it difficult for ambulances to enter and exit, Spanish Red Cross National Emergency Director Iñigo Vila told Reuters.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Transport Minister Oscar Puente, who canceled their trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, were among those who went to the crash site on Monday.
Police drone footage showed how the trains stopped 500 meters apart. A train car was split in two, and one part was crushed like a tin can.
Adamuz resident Paqui, who ran with her husband to save survivors, said she saw body parts on the tracks between the two crash sites.
“(My husband) found a dead child inside, another child was looking for his mother. You’re never ready to see something like that,” she said.
There were approximately 400 passengers on the two trains, according to statements by the two operators of the trains, Iryo and state-run Renfe’s Alvia.
Police said they opened an office in Cordoba for relatives to provide DNA samples to help identify the dead.
Renfe President Álvaro Fernandez Heredia said in a statement on the Cadena Ser radio station that the Iryo train, traveling at 110 kilometers per hour, derailed on its way from Malaga to Madrid.
Twenty seconds later, the second train heading to Huelva at 200 kilometers per hour collided with either the last two cars of the Iryo train or debris on the line, he said. A wheel of the Iryo train was missing, its location yet to be determined.
Fernandez Heredia said that it was too early to talk about the cause of the incident, but that it happened in “strange circumstances”, adding that human error had been almost completely eliminated.
Infrastructure problems ranging from signal failures to overhead power lines on the line near Adamuz have caused delays on high-speed trains 10 times since 2022, according to a Reuters review of state railway infrastructure manager Adif’s X account.
The death toll from a train crash in Spain is the highest since 2013, when a train derailed and burst into flames in the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela, killing 80 people and injuring 145. According to Eurostat data, the accident is among the 20 deadliest accidents in Europe in the last 80 years.
Juan Barroso lost four family members and was desperately traveling from hospital to hospital and calling railroad companies for answers.
He said that his cousin and her six-year-old daughter had been recovered, but others including his nephew were still missing, he told state broadcaster RTVE
THE RUNWAY WAS RENEWED LAST YEAR
The tragedy also revives memories of the 2004 bomb attack on four trains heading to Madrid’s Atocha train station, killing nearly 200 people.
Spain has experienced a series of national emergencies in the past 18 months, including deadly floods in Valencia, a massive power outage and the worst fire season in three decades.
Puente said the Iryo train is less than four years old and the railway line near Adamuz was completely renewed last May with an investment of 700 million euros ($813.5 million). Iryo said the train was last inspected on January 15.
According to Adif, Spain’s high-speed rail network has 3,622 km of lines, making it the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world after China.
According to the competition authority CNMC, nearly 10 million people used the high-speed rail connection between Madrid and Andalusia in 2024.
The government was criticized last year for a series of network delays caused by power outages and the theft of copper cables from lines.
Spain opened its high-speed rail network to private competition in 2020 to offer low-cost alternatives to Renfe’s Ave trains.
Iryo is a joint venture between Italian state railway operator Ferrovie dello Stato, airline Air Nostrum and Spanish infrastructure investment fund Globalvia. It became operational in November 2022.
($1 = 0.8604 euros)
(Reporting by Nina Lopez, Michael Gore, Leonardo Benassatto, Susana Vera, Emma Pinedo and Victoria Waldersee; Additional reporting by Pietro Lombardi; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by David Latona and Sharon Singleton)
