At least 64 people have been killed and more than 100 injured after two high-speed trains collided in central Spain, in the province of Toledo.
The trains were travelling in the same direction from Madrid towards Seville when the crash occurred on Wednesday morning. Castilla-La Mancha’s president, Emiliano GarcĂa-Page, said 50 of those injured were in a serious condition.
The collision involved a state-owned Renfe AVE service and an Iryo train operated by a private company. Early reports indicated that the Renfe train was carrying 397 passengers, while 147 people were aboard the Iryo service.
The rear carriages of the Iryo train appeared to have suffered the worst damage after being struck by the Renfe train. Several carriages were derailed, leaving passengers trapped and emergency crews searching the wreckage.
One passenger, Sebastián Herrero, told El Mundo that the damaged carriages were “just a twisted mass of metal” and said it was “impossible to understand how there was no warning”. Another passenger described the scene as “apocalyptic”.
Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, said an accident involving a signalling and security-system failure was being examined. He said the system on a 63-kilometre stretch of track had stopped working because of a computer malfunction at about 8.30am, bringing trains to a halt.
Mr Puente said a central command centre had then instructed the Renfe train to resume its journey without speed restrictions, despite a stop signal remaining active. The train collided with the stationary Iryo service at about 8.53am and may have been travelling at up to 200km/h, he said.
“I am not attributing responsibility to anyone, I am just stating the facts,” Mr Puente said, adding that the train engineers were not to blame.
Passengers described a sudden impact and violent movement inside the trains. Jesús Jerónimo, who was travelling in the second carriage of the Renfe service, said he felt “a really brutal acceleration” before being thrown into the seat in front of him.
A passenger on the Iryo train said people had been trapped beneath the carriages and that there had been “many people screaming because they couldn’t get out”.
Rail services were suspended between Madrid, Ciudad Real and Andalusia as emergency services worked at the scene. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said he was “shocked” by the “serious train accident” and expressed his support for the victims and their families.
The crash occurred nine months after another accident involving trains operated by Renfe and Iryo on the same line in southern Spain. That incident killed 45 people and was the country’s deadliest rail crash since 2013, when 80 people died.
Tributes were also sent by Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, French president Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
