Key Highlights
- Officials are working to identify the dead. Puente said the investigation could take at least a month, describing the incident as "extremely strange". Spanish media report that a 30cm gap in one of the rails is the current focus of the investigation. Technicians told the El Mundo newspaper that a "bad" or "deteriorated" weld was "more than likely" the cause for the derailment. What we know about Spain's worst rail disaster in over a decadeSpain to hold three days of mourning for victims of high-speed train crashIgnacio Barron, head of Spain's Commission of Investigation of Rail Accidents (CIAF), said on RTVE: "What always plays a part in a derailment is the interaction between the track and the vehicle, and that is what the commission is currently [looking into]."However, Spain's El País newspaper reports that it was not clear whether the fault was a cause or a result of the crash. On Monday, Renfe President Álvaro Fernández Heredia apparently ruled out "human error", telling RNE TV show Las Mañanas that, if "the driver makes a mistake, the system itself corrects it". Four hundred passengers and staff were on board the two trains, the rail authorities said.
- Emergency services treated 122 people, with 41, including children, still in hospital.
- Of those, 12 are in intensive care. Salvador Jimenez, a journalist with RTVE who was on one of the trains, said the impact felt like an "earthquake"."I was in the first carriage.
- There was a moment when it felt like an earthquake and the train had indeed derailed," Jimenez said. Footage from the scene appears to show some train carriages had tipped over on their sides.
- Rescue workers can be seen scaling the train to pull people out of the lopsided train doors and windows. A Madrid-bound passenger, José, told public broadcaster Canal Sur: "There were people and screaming, calling for doctors."Watch: Footage inside Spanish train as passengers evacuate from crashRail network operator Adif said the collision happened at 19:45 local time (18:45 GMT) on Sunday, about an hour after one of the trains left Málaga heading north to Madrid, when it derailed on a straight stretch of track near the city of Córdoba. The force of the crash pushed the carriages of the second train into an embankment, according to the transport minister.
