At least 21 dead and dozens injured in collision between two trains in Spain

A rail accident involving two high-speed trains on Sunday left at least 21 people dead and around 30 seriously injured in southern Spain, according to the Guardia Civil, after a violent collision that sent carriages flying off the tracks.

The Spanish Transport Minister, Oscar Puente, said on X that “the shock has been terrible”.

“All the injured people requiring hospital treatment have been evacuated,” he said at a press briefing early on Monday morning. “We are talking about 30 seriously injured people who have been transferred to hospitals,” he added.

Images broadcast on public television showed the two trains surrounded by crowds of people and ambulances, while emergency services worked to help the many injured.

The last carriages of a train belonging to the Iryo company, which had set off from Malaga in Andalusia on its way to Madrid, derailed near Adamuz, almost 200 km north of Malaga, the minister said. They collided with a train belonging to the national company Renfe, which was travelling in the opposite direction on an adjacent track towards Huelva.

The impact of the collision between the trains, with hundreds of passengers on board, “threw the first two carriages of the Renfe train off the tracks,” he continued, explaining that “the priority” for the moment was “to rescue the victims”.

The Guardia Civil told AFP in its latest report that at least 21 people had died, while the Andalusian regional authorities said that at least 73 had been injured, six of them very seriously, and that “it looks like it will be a very difficult night”.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez spoke of “a night of deep sorrow” after “the tragic rail accident”. He said he was closely monitoring operations, with the central government in Madrid “collaborating with the other competent authorities” mobilised at the scene.

For its part, the Spanish royal family expressed in a statement its “great concern” following this “serious accident”.

“Everything is completely destroyed,” Francisco Carmona, Cordoba’s fire chief, told public television channel TVE.

“We’ve even had to move bodies to get to living people,” he added.

A horror film

“It was like something out of a horror film,” one passenger, Lucas Meriako, who was on board the Iryo train, told La Sexta television.

“There was a very violent impact at the back and it felt like the whole train was going to break up […] Many people were injured by shards of glass,” he said.

It was as if “an earthquake” had shaken the carriage, a journalist from public radio RNE, who was travelling on one of the two trains, told public television channel TVE.

The occupants of the carriage grabbed the emergency hammers, smashed the windows and started to get out of the train, he said.

More than 300 people were on the Iryo train and more than 100 on the Renfe train, according to Spanish media reports.

In Madrid’s main Atocha station, “support teams will be deployed to accompany the families” of those affected, announced the president of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his “thoughts” to the victims of the accident, describing it as “a tragedy” and pledging France’s support to Spain.

In view of the situation, “high-speed train traffic between Madrid and Cordoba, Seville, Málaga and Huelva [cities in southern Spain, editor’s note] will be interrupted for at least the whole of Monday 19 January,” the Spanish rail network operator (Adif) said on X.