MADRID — At least 41 people were killed when two high-speed passenger trains collided Sunday in southern Spain, officials said Tuesday, prompting a sprawling rescue and recovery effort.
The crash occurred after a train partially derailed, causing it to collide with a second train traveling in the opposite direction on an adjacent track, Spanish Transportation Minister Óscar Puente told a news conference Sunday night in Madrid.
The crash killed 41 and injured at least 122, Andalusian emergency authorities said Tuesday.
The cause of the derailment is unknown, Puente said, calling the accident “extremely strange.” The train that initially derailed was a relatively new model, he added.
The accident happened around 7:45 p.m. local time Sunday near Adamuz, in Córdoba province, about 220 miles south of the country’s capital, Madrid. The train that initially derailed was traveling from the southern city of Málaga to the capital, while the other was traveling from Madrid to the southwestern port city of Huelva.
The first train that derailed had about 300 passengers and crew members aboard, according to operator Iryo, a private high-speed rail company. In a statement Monday, Iryo said the train was manufactured in 2022 and inspected most recently on Thursday.
It was not immediately clear how many people were on board the second train, which was operated by Spain’s public rail operator, Renfe. Both operators said they were collaborating with authorities.
The force of the impact caused the front carriages of the second train, which was traveling at more than 120 mph, to careen into a ditch, with over 50 people aboard the derailed carriages, Puente said.
Video footage of the crash site showed a red-and-silver-striped train partially tilted on its side as rescue workers reached through shattered windows to help people escape.
Images shared by Spanish authorities on Monday morning showed the second derailed train straddling two adjacent sets of tracks, with scraps of debris strewn widely and some carriages in an adjacent gully.
Puente called it “bad luck” that one train happened to be passing by another when the derailment occurred. “If there had not been an oncoming train, we would probably not be talking about casualties of any kind,” he said.
He also said that the derailment happened on a recently renovated, straight stretch of track.
At the news conference, Puente said that all those who needed medical attention were taken to area hospitals, and rescue workers had shifted their focus to removing the dead.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said emergency workers were working “without rest” and expressed condolences to the victims’ families.
“Tonight is a night of profound sorrow for our country,” he said, adding, “No words can alleviate such great suffering.”
Spain, the second-most-visited country in the world, has the longest high-speed rail network in Europe and the second-longest on Earth, after China. Some 40 million passengers rode high-speed long-distance trains in the country in 2024, according to a Spanish government report, and the average commercial speed is about 137 mph.
Deaths caused by rail collisions and derailments are rare in Europe, according to European Union data — although they have on some occasions claimed high death tolls. In 2013, 80 people were killed in northwestern Spain after a train careened off the tracks as it rounded a bend too quickly.
High-speed rail between Madrid and major cities in southern Spain, including Córdoba, Seville, Málaga and Huelva, is expected to reopen on Feb. 2, Puente said in a television interview.
Kasulis Cho reported from Seoul, Sands from London and Valiño from A Coruña. Frances Vinall in Seoul contributed to this report.
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