39 dead after high-speed train collision in southern Spain

At least 39 people have died in a high-speed train collision in southern Spain on Sunday, Spanish police said.

Video and photos showed twisted train carriages lying on their sides under floodlights.

Passengers reported climbing out of smashed windows, with some using emergency hammers to break the windows, according to Salvador Jimenez, a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE, who was on board one of the derailed trains.

He told the network that “there was a moment when it felt like an earthquake and the train had indeed derailed”.

The crash occurred when the tail end of a train carrying 300 passengers on the route from Malaga to the capital, Madrid, went off the rails at 7.45pm local time (6.45pm GMT).

It slammed into an incoming train travelling from Madrid to Huelva, another southern Spanish city, according to rail operator Adif.

The collision took place near Adamuz, a town in the province of Cordoba, about 230 miles south of Madrid.

Spanish police said 159 people were injured, of whom five were in critical condition. A further 24 were in serious condition, authorities said.

Transport minister Oscar Puente said the death toll was not final.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared three days of national mourning for the victims.

“Today is a day of pain for all of Spain,” Mr Sanchez said on a visit to Adamuz, where many locals helped emergency services handle the influx of passengers overnight.

A sports centre was turned into a makeshift hospital and the Spanish Red Cross set up a help centre offering assistance to emergency services and people seeking information. Members of Spain’s civil guard and civil defence worked on-site throughout the night.

Spain’s transport minister Oscar Puente early 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.

Alvaro Fernandez, the president of Renfe, told Spanish public radio RNE that both trains were well under the speed limit of 250kph (155mph). He said one was going at 205kph (127mph) and the other at 210kph (130mph). He also said that “human error could be ruled out”.

The minister also said the train that left the track was less than four years old. That train belonged to the private company Iryo, while the second train, which took the brunt of the impact, was part of Spain’s public train company, Renfe.

According to Mr Puente, the back part of the first train derailed and crashed into the head of the other train, knocking its first two carriages off the track and down a 13ft slope. He said the worst damage was to the front section of the Renfe train.

When asked by reporters how long an inquiry into the crash’s cause could take, he said it could be a month.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez expressed his condolences to the victims’ families.

“Tonight is a night of deep pain for our country,” he wrote on X.

Spain has the largest rail network in Europe for trains moving over 155mph, 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.

Train services on Monday between Madrid and cities in Andalusia were cancelled.

Spain’s worst train accident this century occurred in 2013, when 80 people died after a train derailed in the country’s north-west.

An investigation concluded the train was traveling at 111mph on a stretch with a 50mph speed limit when it left the tracks.