ADAMUZ, Spain — Spanish police said Monday that at least 40 people were confirmed dead in a high-speed rail collision the previous night in the south of the country when the tail end of a 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 news 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 13-foot slope. Some bodies were found hundreds of feet from the crash site, Moreno said, describing the wreckage as a “mass of twisted metal” with bodies likely still to be found inside.
Efforts to recover the bodies continued Monday, and the death toll could rise. Authorities have asked family members to provide DNA samples to help identify victims.
The crash took place 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. 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.
Three days of mourning
The accident shook Spain, a nation that leads Europe in high-speed train 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,” 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.
Violent impact, twisted metal
Moreno, the regional leader, said Monday 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,” Moreno said.
Video released by the Civil Guard showed the worst-hit carriages shredded open, train seats cast on the gravel packing under the tracks. One carriage lay on its side, bent around a large concrete pillar, with debris scattered around the area.
Passengers reported climbing out of smashed windows, with some using emergency hammers to break the glass.
Andalusia’s regional emergency services said 43 people remained hospitalized, 12 of whom were in intensive care units. Another 79 passengers were discharged by Monday afternoon, authorities said.
Train services Monday between Madrid and cities in Andalusia were canceled, causing large 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.
Officials call accident ‘strange’
Transport Minister Puente on 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 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 said it had sent a letter in August 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 155 mph; one was going 127 mph, the other 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 the victims
Various Spaniards who had loved ones on the trains posted messages on social media saying they were unaccounted for and pleading for any information.
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 230 miles south of Madrid, was turned into a makeshift hospital. The Spanish Red Cross set up a help center offering assistance to emergency services and people seeking information.
“The scene was horrific. It was terrible,” Adamuz Mayor Rafael Moreno said. “People asking and begging for help. Those leaving the wreckage. Images that will always stay in my mind.”
Spanish King Felipe VI expressed his condolences Monday.
“I understand the desperation of the families and the number of injured people who have suffered this accident, and we are all really worried,” the king said, speaking from Athens.
The Spanish flag was flown at half-staff in front of Parliament in Madrid for the victims on Monday.
First deadly accident 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 155 mph, with more than 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.
Iryo became the first private competitor in high-speed to Renfe in Spain in 2022.
Sunday’s accident was the first with deaths on a high-speed train since Spain’s high-speed rail network opened in 1992.
Sullivan, Wilson and Naishadham write for the Associated Press. Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain, and Naishadham from Madrid. Video journalist Alicia León in Adamuz and AP journalist Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed.
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