At least 39 die in high-speed train crash in Spain

At least 39 people have died following a high-speed train crash in southern Spain, the regional authorities reported on Monday, with the death toll expected to rise further as the recovery operation proceeds.

Juanma Moreno, president of the Andalusia region, said he could not rule out the possibility of further bodies being found in the “pile of broken metal.”

More than 170 passengers were injured, 24 of them seriously and five of those extremely seriously, the authorities said. National broadcaster RTVE said four of those seriously hurt were minors.

Ascertaining the cause of the accident is expected to take months.

Numerous passengers remained trapped in the trains hours after the crash. Fire chief Paco Carmona described a difficult operation: “It is a hard-to-reach area. The extent of the destruction was also great. Chaos, open fractures. Anything but pleasant.”

The two high-speed trains collided at around 7:40 pm (1840 GMT) on Sunday near the town of Adamuz in the Andalusian province of Córdoba, Spanish rail operator Renfe said. The Renfe train driver was among those killed.

An Iryo train, travelling at more than 200 kilometres per hour and carrying more than 300 people, derailed and came to rest on the adjacent track, Renfe said. An oncoming Renfe train with about 200 onboard was passing at that precise moment, smashing into the Iryo train and also derailing.

The Iryo train was operated by the Italian company Trenitalia.

“The impact was so severe that the two front carriages of the Renfe train were thrown off the tracks as a result,” said Spain’s Transport Minister Óscar Puente.

The carriages plunged down a 4-metre embankment and were largely destroyed.

Service on the key route between Madrid and Andalusia was suspended.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez promised swift assistance, cancelled all appointments, and set off from Madrid to the site of the disaster where he announced a three-day national mourning period from Tuesday to Thursday.

He vowed that they would “bring the truth to light” about the cause of the accident.

Wearing a yellow safety vest from the rail network operator Adif, the Socialist politician spoke again — as he had earlier on platform X — of a “night of deep sorrow” for the country.

The government announced that Sánchez would not attend the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday as planned.

Speaking from Greece, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia expressed their sympathies to the victims and wished the injured a speedy and complete recovery.

They announced their early return to Spain after the funeral of Irene of Greece, sister of Spain’s Queen Sofia, wife of the abdicated king Juan Carlos I.

A young woman passenger in the Iryo train interviewed by RTVE fought back her tears as she described the accident. “The emergency brakes were applied, and it went pitch dark,” she said.

“I fell head first from my seat. People and luggage flew through the air. There were screams, crying children and blood. I felt as though I had been born again,” she added.

Salvador Jiménez, a journalist, said: “It was like an earthquake.”

Speaking on television, Spanish rail expert Joan Carlos Salmerón noted that speeds of up to 250 kilometres per hour were permitted on that stretch of track and ruled out human error as the cause of the accident.

He suggested that track damage, an obstacle on the line or a fault in the train could have caused the accident.

Alongside the royal household in Madrid, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, other EU leaders including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his government, Pope Leo XIV, Spanish tennis icon Rafael Nadal, and even the government of Thailand, where a serious train accident also occurred last week, offered their sympathy and condolences.

Throughout Spain, but especially in Galicia, memories were stirred of another terrible disaster from July 24, 2013. A train derailed in Angrois, just a few kilometres before Santiago de Compostela, while travelling at high speed around a curve. Eighty people lost their lives in that accident.