39 killed as high-speed trains collide in Spain
ADAMUZ, SPAIN—Spanish police said on Monday that at least 39 people are confirmed dead in a high-speed train collision the previous night in the south of the country and rescue efforts were continuing.
Video and photos showed twisted train cars lying on their sides under floodlights. Passengers reported climbing out of smashed windows, with some using emergency hammers to break the windows, according to Salvador Jiménez, a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE, who was on board one of the derailed trains.
He told the network by phone on Sunday that “there was a moment when it felt like an earthquake and the train had indeed derailed.”
The crash occurred when the tail end of a train carrying some 300 passengers on the route from Malaga to the capital, Madrid, went off the rails at 7:45 p.m. It slammed into an incoming train traveling from Madrid to Huelva, another southern Spanish city, according to rail operator Adif.
The collision took place near Adamuz, a town in the province of Cordoba, about 370 kilometers (km) south of Madrid.
Accident ‘strange’
Spanish police said 159 people were injured, of whom five were in critical condition. A further 24 were in serious condition, authorities said. Transport Minister Óscar Puente said the death toll was not final.
In Adamuz, a sports center was turned into a makeshift hospital and the Spanish Red Cross set up a help center offering assistance to emergency services and people seeking information. Members of Spain’s civil guard and civil defense worked on site throughout the night.
Spain’s Transport Minister Óscar Puente on early Monday said the cause of the crash was unknown.
‘Deep pain’
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 4 years old. That train belonged to the private company Iryo, while the second train, which took the brunt of the impact, was part of Spain’s public train company, Renfe.
According to Puente, the back part of the first train derailed and crashed into the head of the other train, knocking its first two carriages off the track and down a 4-meter slope. He said the worst damage was to the front section of the Renfe train.
When asked by reporters how long an inquiry into the crash’s cause could take, he said it could be a month.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed his condolences to the victims’ families. “Tonight is a night of deep pain for our country,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Spain has the largest rail network in Europe for trains moving over 250 kilometers per hour (kph), with more than 3,100 km of track, according to the European Union.
Safe network
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.
Train services on Monday between Madrid and cities in Andalusia were canceled.
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 on a stretch with an 80 kph speed limit when it left the tracks.
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