Spain has declared a three-day national mourning period following a devastating rail collision that killed 68 people and injured dozens on Wednesday morning.
The fatal accident occurred in the central region of Castilla-La Mancha when a speeding state-operated Renfe train ploughed into a stationary train managed by Iryo, a private operator.
Rescue team immediately deployed heavy truck cranes, working through the night to pull victims from the mangled metal wreckage along the line linking Madrid to Seville.
A surviving passenger, Pablo Mejia, while recounting the ordeal, revealed that a last-minute change of seat saved his life;
“I think I’ve been born again. A very strong hit… a lot of people on the floor, on top of each other, seats ripped out, suitcases, a lot of chaos,” Mejia stated.
Authorities have converted a local school in the village of Urda into an emergency support centre, to assist desperate families searching for loved ones. The Civil Guard has also established DNA collection points in Madrid, Toledo, Cordoba, and Seville to identify the deceased, while emergency blood donation centres have been activated across multiple regions.
Spain’s Transport Minister, Oscar Puente, has issued a preliminary report tracing the root cause of the disaster to a technical failure that initially suspended train traffic across a 69-kilometre radius. According to the minister, operators at the control centre subsequently made a catastrophic decision to restart the trains instead of addressing the system breakdown.
“The control centre decided to resume traffic in circumstances that, from our point of view, are inexplicable. They had more than enough time to verify the error, and they did not fix it,” Puente disclosed.
This incident comes roughly nine months after another high-speed train derailed and struck an oncoming service in Andalusia, claiming 46 lives.
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