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A Barcelona commuter train crashed Tuesday after a retaining wall fell onto the tracks, killing one person and injuring at least 37 others, Spanish regional authorities said.
Catalonia regional fire inspector Claudi Gallardo said the deceased was the driver of the train, and that all passengers had been removed from the train.
The crash in northeastern Spain came just two days after a separate deadly train collision killed at least 42 people in the country’s south. Dozens more were injured.
Emergency services in Catalonia said of the 37 people affected by Tuesday’s crash, five were seriously injured. Six others were in less serious condition.
While Spain’s high-speed rail network runs smoothly, the commuter rail service is plagued by reliability issues, though accidents causing injury or death are not common in either.
The commuter train crashed near the town of Gelida, located about 35 minutes outside of Barcelona.
Rescue crews worked throughout the night to reach trapped passengers after a deadly high-speed train accident on a remote stretch of tracks near Adamuz, Spain.
Collapse came after heavy rainfall
Spain’s railway operator ADIF said the containment wall likely collapsed due to heavy rainfall that swept across the northeastern Spanish region this week. Commuter train service was cancelled along the line, it said.
Emergency workers Tuesday were still searching for more victims in the wreckage from Sunday’s deadly train accident that took place some 800 kilometres away, as the nation began three days of mourning.
Antonio Sanz, the regional health minister of Andalusia, where Sunday’s accident occurred, told Spanish media that the official toll from the accident had risen after another corpse was discovered in a severely damaged car.
Fidel Saez lost his mother in the wreck, but his two children, his brother and a nephew survived. Their trip to the capital to see musical The Lion King turned into a nightmare on the way home.
“My brother has been taken off respirator. He told me that it was a miracle that he is alive. He had to get the children through a window,” Saez told national TV broadcaster TVE. “He also asked me to tell the story of our mother, how good she was.”
Health authorities said 39 people remained in hospitals on Tuesday morning, while 83 people were treated and discharged.
Among them was Emil Johnson, a Swedish citizen based in Malaga who was traveling to Madrid to renew his passport.
“It was probably two, three seconds. And everything was broken,” Jonsson, sitting in a wheelchair due to bruises on his ribs and back and dressed in part of a hospital gown, told reporters. “When we crashed, I didn’t know who was alive and who was dead.”
Amid the tragedy, it emerged that a six-year-old girl survived the wreck without major injury, while her parents, brother and cousin all died.
The mayor of their hometown called her survival a “miracle.”
