Serious train accident along the connecting high-speed line Madrid and the southern region of Andalusia, Spain. Two trains collided near the station Adamuznear Cordoba, provoking at least twenty-one victims confirmed e a hundred injuredof which 25 were serious, with some passengers still trapped in the carriages involved, according to the Guardia Civil, emergency services and witnesses.
According to an initial reconstruction provided by Adif, the Spanish railway infrastructure, the accident occurred at 7.39pm, when a train of the Iryo company in service between Malaga and Madrid Puerta de Atocha, with 317 people on board, it derailed in the entrance switches to street 1 of Adamuz station. According to some rumors collected by ilfattoquotidiano.iteverything happened at an exchange which may not have worked properly. At the moment, they say, it is only a hypothesis. The eighth car of the train That went off the rails and would have also derailed the sixth and seventh. Just at that moment a high-speed train on the Alvia state road was passing by (Renfe) in the other direction – coming from Madrid and heading to Huelva – which overwhelmed the convoy Etr 1000 of Italian manufacture (it had entered service just two years ago) and managed by the Iryo company. Iryo is the brand of trains operated by Ilsa, a consortium made up of Ferrovie dello Stato International (51%), Air Nostrum and Globalvia. As El Pais writes, the operator Iryo is the second by market share in Spain and has 20 latest generation ETR-1000 trains produced by Hitachi.
Rail circulation between Madrid and the Andalusia region was immediately suspended, with heavy inconvenience for thousands of users returning on Sunday, while the authorities of the region, who activated Civil Protection emergency level 1, speak of a “very serious” and still provisional toll. “The impact was terrible, thus causing the derailment of the first two carriages of the Renfe train (Alvia),” declared the Minister of Transport, Oscar Puentein a message on X. “The number of victims cannot be confirmed at this time,” he said.
Around 11pm on January 18, the head of the Adamuz fire brigade told the public broadcaster TVE: “We are giving priority to living people, we are working in the carriages looking for survivors under a pile of armchairs, sheets of metal and luggage.” Numerous witnesses recounted the scenes of panic and chaos, including the journalist from Radio Nacional de Espana (Rne), Salvador Jimenezwho was traveling on the train from Malaga and witnessed the incident live. “We left Malaga at 6.40pm on time. At 7.45pm there was an impact, it felt like an earthquake that shook all the carriages. I was in the first one,” said Jimenez. Staff used emergency hammers to break windows to try to evacuate passengers.
