The Spanish authorities were struggling on Tuesday to identify those killed in a collision between two high-speed trains that left at least 41 people dead on Sunday, as investigators focused on whether a problem with the track may have caused it.
The crash, Spain’s worst railway disaster since 2013, has prompted days of national mourning and a rare call for political unity. But it has also shaken a country that depends on, and takes great pride in, its high-speed rail system, the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world, behind only China’s.
More than a day after the crash in Adamuz, a town in southern Spain near the city of Córdoba, 23 autopsies had been completed, but only five bodies had been definitively identified with fingerprint matches, according to data coordinated by Spain’s Interior Ministry. The Spanish police said they had received missing-person reports for 40 people.
The crash occurred when a privately operated train bound for Madrid partly derailed and two of its cars fell onto the opposite track, where they were struck by an incoming train. Many Spanish news reports on Tuesday focused on a photograph, released by the Guardia Civil, of investigators examining a particular stretch of track near the disaster site. The Commission for the Investigation of Railway Accidents has said that it is examining the general condition of the track as a possible cause of the crash.
Óscar Puente, Spain’s transport minister, said in a radio interview on Tuesday that there had been “an initial break” in the track, but he added that “no technician is yet able to say whether it is a cause or a consequence” of the derailment. “If the rail broke first, we would need to find out why a solid steel rail broke,” he said.
In the meantime, more vivid details of the crash from surviving passengers began to emerge in the Spanish press.
Passengers on the Madrid-bound train recounted cars vibrating strangely, carriages lurching, suitcases tumbling and glasses sliding off tables onto the floor during the initial derailment. About 20 seconds later, around 7:45 p.m., the other train, operated by the national rail provider, Renfe, barreled into the derailed carriages. Its first two cars fell down a 12-foot embankment, a preliminary report said.
The Madrid-bound train, which had about 300 people aboard, continued for hundreds of meters before coming to a stop. Surviving passengers described wandering in the dark and cold through a scene strewn with corpses, as local residents rushed to help them.
“I used my quad back and forward to transport the injured,” said one resident, Gonzalo Sánchez, referring to the off-road vehicle he drove through the steep, slippery terrain. “It was the best way I could help.” He spent hours bringing rescue workers to the trains and passengers away from the wreck.
One survivor, a 6-year-old girl, wandered through the dark as her parents, her brother and her cousin lay dead among the wreckage of the southbound Renfe train.
The mayor of Adamuz, Rafael Ángel Moreno, who was one of the first people on the scene, spoke with emotion about an “overwhelming solidarity” in his town of about 4,100 people. Despite Spain’s cantankerous political landscape, that unity seemed to extend across the country on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, of the governing Socialist Party, made a joint appearance in Adamuz with Juanma Moreno, the president of the regional government of Andalucía, from the conservative Popular Party. “Every tragedy demands two things: unity in grief, unity in response,” Mr. Sánchez said.
The leader of the hard-right wing Vox party, Santiago Abascal, has blamed the Sánchez government for the accident, writing on social media, “Nothing works under corruption and deceit.” But the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, also appeared in Adamuz, recalling that he was the president of the Galicia region when a train crash there killed 80 people in 2013.
“We have shown that when Spain faces a major problem, it unites,” Mr. Feijóo said, adding, “We have a great country.”
Jason Horowitz is the Madrid bureau chief for The Times, covering Spain, Portugal and the way people live throughout Europe.
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