Regional Spanish officials said Monday that at least 40 people are confirmed dead after a high-speed rail collision in the country’s south that occurred after the tail end of one train jumped the track, causing another train speeding past in the opposite direction to derail.
Juanma Moreno, the president of Andalusia, the southern Spanish region where the accident happened, confirmed the new death toll in an afternoon press conference. Efforts to recover the bodies from the two wrecked train cars continued, he added.
The impact tossed the second train’s lead carriages off the track, sending them plummeting down a 4-meter (13-foot) slope. Some bodies were found hundreds of meters (feet) from the crash site, Mr. Moreno said earlier in the day, describing the wreckage as a “mass of twisted metal.”
Authorities are also focusing on attending to hundreds of distraught family members and have asked them to provide DNA samples to help identify victims.
The crash took place on Sunday at 7:45 p.m. when the tail end of a train carrying 289 passengers on the route from Malaga to the capital, Madrid, went off the rails. It slammed into an incoming train traveling from Madrid to Huelva, another southern Spanish city, according to rail operator Adif.
The head of the second train, which was carrying nearly 200 passengers, took the brunt of the impact, Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said. That collision knocked its first two carriages off the track. Mr. Puente said that it appeared the largest number of the deaths occurred in those carriages.
Authorities said all the survivors had been rescued in the early morning.
The accident shook a nation that leads Europe in high-speed rail mileage and takes pride in a network considered at the cutting edge of rail transport.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared three days of national mourning for the victims of the crash.
“Today is a day of pain for all of Spain,” Mr. Sánchez said on a visit to Adamuz, a village near the accident site, where many locals helped emergency services handle the influx of distraught and hurt passengers overnight.
Twisted metal after impact
Mr. Moreno, the regional leader, said Monday morning that emergency services were still searching for bodies.
“Here at ground zero, when you look at this mass of twisted iron, you see the violence of the impact,” Mr. Moreno said. “The impact was so incredibly violent that we have found bodies hundreds of meters away.”
A video released by the Civil Guard showed the worst-hit carriages shredded open, train seats cast onto the gravel packing under the tracks. One carriage lay on its side, bent around a large concrete pillar, with debris scattered around.
Passengers reported climbing out of smashed windows, with some using emergency hammers to break the glass.
Andalusia’s regional emergency services said 41 people remained hospitalized, 12 of whom were in intensive care units. Another 81 passengers were discharged by late Monday afternoon, authorities said.
Train services between Madrid and cities in Andalusia on Monday were canceled, causing major disruptions. Spanish airline Iberia added flights to Seville and another two to Malaga to help stranded travelers. Some bus companies also reinforced their services in the south.
Investigation begins
Transport Minister Puente early Monday said the cause of the crash was unknown.
He called it “a truly strange” incident because it happened on a flat stretch of track that had been renovated in May. He also said the train that jumped the track was less than four years old. That train belonged to the Italian-owned company Iryo, while the second train was part of Spain’s public train company, Renfe.
According to Mr. Puente, the back part of the first train derailed and crashed into the head of the other train. An investigation into the cause could take a month, he said.
The Spanish Union of Railway Drivers told The Associated Press that in August, it sent a letter asking Spain’s national railway operator to investigate flaws on train lines across the country and to reduce speeds at certain points until the tracks were fully repaired. Those recommendations were made for high-speed train lines, including the one where Sunday’s accident took place, the union said.
Álvaro Fernández, the president of Renfe, told Spanish public radio RNE that both trains were well under the speed limit of 250 kph (155 mph); one was going 205 kph (127 mph), the other 210 kph (130 mph). He also said that “human error could be ruled out.”
The incident “must be related to the moving equipment of Iryo or the infrastructure,” he said.
Iryo issued a statement on Monday saying that its train was manufactured in 2022 and passed its latest safety check on Jan. 15.
Identifying passengers
The Civil Guard opened an office in Cordoba, the nearest city to the crash, as well as Madrid, Malaga, Huelva and Seville for family members of the missing to seek help and leave DNA samples.
“There were moments when we had to remove the dead to get to the living,” Francisco Carmona, firefighter chief of Cordoba, told Onda Cero radio.
A sports center in Adamuz, a town in the province of Cordoba, about 370 kilometers (about 230 miles) south of Madrid, was turned into a makeshift hospital. The Spanish Red Cross set up a help center to assist emergency services and people seeking information.
One passenger had been treated at a local hospital along with her sister before she returned to Adamuz, hoping to find her lost dog.
First fatal crash for Spain’s high-speed trains
Spain has spent decades investing heavily in high-speed trains and currently has the largest rail network in Europe for trains moving over 250 kph (155 mph), with more than 3,900 kilometers (2,400 miles) of track, according to the International Union of Railways.
The network is a popular, competitively priced, and safe mode of transport. Renfe said more than 25 million passengers took one of its high-speed trains in 2024.
Sunday’s accident was the first with deaths on a high-speed train since Spain’s high-speed rail network opened its first line in 1992.
Spain’s worst train accident this century occurred in 2013, when 80 people died after a train derailed in the country’s northwest. An investigation concluded the train was traveling 179 kph (111 mph) on a stretch with an 80 kph (50 mph) speed limit when it left the tracks. That stretch of track was not high-speed.
This story was reported by The Associated Press
