A labor union raised concerns last year about Spain’s railway lines.

PinnedUpdated Here’s the latest.The Spanish authorities on Monday were investigating the cause of a high-speed crash between two trains in southern Spain the night before that killed at least 40 people, as survivors described harrowing scenes of bodies thrown from mangled train cars.The authorities said the collision occurred about 7:45 p.m. local time on Sunday in Adamuz, a small town near the city of Córdoba, along the main high-speed rail line connecting southern Spain with Madrid, the capital. Spain’s transport minister warned that the death toll was “not final.” The crash was the deadliest in Spain since at least 2013.Juanma Moreno, the president of the regional government of Andalucía, told Spain’s RNE radio that some bodies had been found hundreds of feet from the crash site. He said rescuers feared that more people might be trapped beneath the train cars. The number of people who remained missing was unclear.According to a provisional investigative report, the two rear cars of a northbound train traveling to Madrid from Málaga, on the country’s southern coast, derailed as it was approaching the Adamuz train station. The derailed train crossed the track as an oncoming southbound train, operated by Spain’s national rail company, Renfe, was arriving. The first two cars of that train, which had departed from Madrid and was heading for the southern city of Huelva, west of Seville, fell down a 12-foot embankment, the report said.Oscar Puente, Spain’s minister of transportation, said that investigators were looking into whether a break in a section of track was “the cause or the consequences” of the derailment. “The accident is extremely strange,” Mr. Puente told reporters, saying it took place on a straight stretch of track. “All the experts we have consulted are extremely baffled.”Work to replace the tracks, switches and junctions was completed in May, he said, and the derailed Iryo train had its most recent inspection on Thursday, according to the company.Álvaro Fernández Heredia, the president of Renfe, said the tragedy wasn’t caused by “a speeding issue.” Records show that one train was traveling about 127 miles per hour and the other about 130 miles per hour, he noted. The speed limit was about 150 miles per hour.The Spanish Union of Railway Drivers said it had sent a letter in August asking the state-owned rail operator and Spain’s railway safety agency to look into what could be flaws on lines across Spain, including at the site of the train crash. The union emphasized on Monday that it did not know the cause of the collision.Iryo said about 300 passengers were on its train during the crash. Renfe has not said how many passengers the second train was carrying.Here’s what else to know:The victims: The Andalucía emergency service said that 43 victims remained hospitalized on Monday afternoon. Of 12 in intensive care, nine were in serious condition, it said. The Córdoba city government issued an urgent appeal for doctors.The scene: Rafael Ángel Moreno, the mayor of Adamuz, described the scene of the crash as “utter chaos.” He said the town’s residents had used their cars as makeshift ambulances and brought food, water, tools and blankets to the site.Suspensions: High-speed train service across much of southern Spain was suspended on Monday, Spain’s railway infrastructure operator said on social media. Renfe said that rail service could be disrupted for days.2013 crash: A high-speed train derailment in Galicia, Spain, killed 80 people and injured 140 others in 2013. A court was told the driver had been on the phone and the train was traveling at 153 kilometers per hour — almost twice the speed limit — at the time of the crash.The network: After China, Spain has the longest high-speed rail network in the world, according to the International Union of Railways. About 40 million passengers use the network every year, according to Renfe, and its average speeds rival those of global leaders like those in Japan and France.Oscar Puente, Spain’s minister of transportation, said that investigators were looking into whether a break in a section of track was “the cause or the consequences” of the derailment. He spoke on a radio program run by the Spanish national broadcaster, noting that any theory was just speculation because investigators were still working.Roser Toll PifarreReporting from Córdoba, SpainAt least 40 people were killed in the crash and 41 are still hospitalized, 12 of them in intensive care, according to an updated toll provided on Monday evening by regional authorities in Andalucía.Roser Toll PifarreReporting from Córdoba, SpainIn Córdoba, Manuel de la Torre has been waiting for news of his 79-year-old aunt, one of five family members who were in the first car of the train heading to Huelva from Madrid. The family members, including three of his aunt’s grand-children, were returning from seeing a musical. Some suffered broken bones, he said, but he has yet to hear about his aunt. “People are just waiting, not knowing whether it’s good or bad,” he said. “But after a whole day now, you don’t expect happy news.”ImageMembers of the Spanish Civil Guard, along with other emergency personnel, work next to one of the trains involved in the accident, in Cordoba, Spain, on Monday.Credit...Susana Vera/ReutersSpain’s Union of Railway Drivers had warned the state-owned rail operator and Spain’s railway safety agency last year about problems with the country’s train tracks, including on the line where two high-speed trains crashed, killing at least 39 people, the union said Monday.The union emphasized that it did not know the cause of the accident, but argued that railway infrastructure had deteriorated because of increased traffic. It released a letter dated August 2025 in which it had urged the railway authorities to increase maintenance. The union did not say whether it had received a response to the letter. The rail operator and the rail safety agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. Spanish authorities urged that it was still too soon to assign blame for the train crash, the country’s deadliest in more than a decade, and that an investigation was forthcoming.“We don’t know, and nobody knows at this moment, the causes,” Óscar Puente, Spain’s transportation minister, said on X.Álvaro Fernández Heredia, the president of Renfe, Spain’s state-owned rail operator, said that the cause of the crash was not yet clear. He said the trains were traveling below their top speeds.“It wasn’t a speeding issue,” he said in an interview aired on Cadena SER, a Spanish broadcaster, but added that safety mechanisms to stop the train in the event of an obstacle on the track would not have had enough time to activate. Roser Toll PifarreReporting from Córdoba, SpainAt the center for victims and their families in Córdoba, a large white screen shielded families from the view of journalists waiting outside. Carmen Moreno, a health coordinator for the Andalusian Red Cross, said the organization was providing food and psychological support, as well as updating lists of patients who were recently cared for in nearby hospitals or health centers. “What people are demanding most is information,” she said. “And since we cannot give them all the information we would like, there is a lot of tension, a lot of anxiety, temporary anxiety from not knowing what is happening, and sadness.”The crash occurred on a new stretch of high-speed rail track, officials say.ImageA train operated by Iryo, a private company, that partially derailed and was hit by another train on Monday near Adamuz, in southern Spain.Credit...Jorge Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe train crash in southern Spain on Sunday occurred on a recently renovated stretch of track in the country’s high-speed rail system, one of the most advanced and extensive in the world.Opened in 1992, Spain’s high-speed rail network is the largest in Europe and second largest in the world, behind only China. It connects more than 50 cities over 2,468 miles of track.Rail traffic numbers have increased significantly in Spain over the last decade. According to an annual report of the country’s National Commission of Markets and Competition, more than 40 million passengers traveled on Spain’s high-speed rail carriers in 2024, a 77 percent increase from 2019.The increased traffic has prompted concerns from Spain’s Union of Railway Drivers, which said on Monday that it had warned regulators last August that the country’s railway infrastructure had deteriorated because of the strain on the tracks. The union emphasized that it was not yet clear whether those potential problems had played a role in the crash, and Spanish officials said that their investigation was ongoing.Spain’s first high-speed line, which connected Madrid and Seville, opened in 1992. The system has been regularly expanding since. Among its features is the highest deployment of the European Union’s rail traffic management system.ImageA train station in Madrid last year.Credit...Carlos Lujan/Europa Press, via Getty ImagesOnce operated primarily by the Spanish national provider Renfe, Spain’s high-speed lines have been opened to more train service providers in recent years as part of a liberalization process, prompted by E.U. regulations. Beginning in 2021, providers like the French company Ouigo and Italy’s Iryo began offering passenger service on Spanish rail.The crash on Sunday occurred on a straight stretch of track near Córdoba, a city that is a key hub for Renfe, the Spanish state-owned train operator. The trains involved in the crash were a high-speed train operated by Iryo and another operated by Alvia, a unit of Renfe, according to a provisional report from investigators.Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, said that the Iryo train involved in the accident was less than four years old, and that the track on which the accident occurred had been renovated in May 2024.Roser Toll PifarreReporting from Córdoba, SpainIn Córdoba, where authorities have set up an information and psychological care center for victims and their families, several people were hoping for news of the missing. Oscar Arias, 60, said he had been in front of the building for hours as he waited to hear about a missing friend. “After so much time has passed, if he hasn’t turned up, it’s a bad sign,” he said.The commission in Spain that investigates rail accidents said in a provisional report that at 7:45 p.m. on Sunday, the last two cars of the train traveling to Madrid from Málaga — which was operated by Iryo, a private company — derailed as it was approaching the Adamuz station. The derailed train crossed the track where the other train, operated by Renfe, Spain’s state-owned rail operator, was arriving in the opposite direction, the report said. The last two cars of the derailed Iryo train collided with the front of the Renfe train, whose first two cars fell down a 12-foot embankment.José BautistaReporting from MadridSeveral buses carrying survivors of the crash have arrived at Madrid’s Atocha train station, where authorities are assisting relatives of victims who have not been able to locate their loved ones or who need psychological support.José BautistaReporting from MadridSpain will observe three days of official mourning, starting at midnight on Monday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, pictured below, announced at the news conference. “Spanish society is asking what happened, how it happened, and how this tragedy could have occurred,” he said, adding that officials would strive to answer the public’s questions.VideoCreditCredit...ReutersJosé BautistaReporting from MadridPrime Minister Pedro Sánchez; Óscar Puente, the transportation minister; Fernando Grande-Marlaska, the interior minister, and other Spanish officials are speaking about the accident at a news conference in Adamuz, near to the site of the derailment. “It is a catastrophe of unknown dimensions,” said Juanma Moreno, the president of Andalucía’s regional government. He added that 48 people were hospitalized.María Clauss and Oscar Toro, a married couple, were killed in the train derailment, a union of journalists in Andalucía said on social media. Ms. Clauss was a photojournalist and Mr. Toro was a journalist, the union said.Video shared by Spain’s Civil Guard shows emergency workers trying to break through glass to get into one of the trains.VideoCreditCredit...Guardia Civil, via ReutersÁlvaro Fernández Heredia, the president of Renfe, Spain’s state-owned rail operator, said that the cause of the accident was not yet clear. “It cannot yet be concluded that the Alvia train collided with the Iryo carriages themselves,” he told Cadena SER, a Spanish broadcaster, referring respectively to the southbound train and the northbound one. “It wasn’t a speeding issue,” he added. The accident occured on a straight stretch of track with a speed limit of about 150 miles per hour, and records show that one train was traveling at about 127 m.p.h. and the other at about 130 m.p.h., he noted. He cautioned that it was too early to draw conclusions but said that safety mechanisms designed to stop trains if there is an obstacle on the tracks would not have had enough time to activate.José BautistaReporting from MadridThe Spanish Union of Railway Drivers said that in a letter last August it had asked Spain’s national railway company and the country’s railway safety agency to look into suspected flaws on lines across Spain, including on the one where the accident occurred. The union stressed that it did not know if such flaws had caused the accident but argued that railway infrastructure has deteriorated because of increased traffic.Forty-three people are still hospitalized, the regional emergency services said on social media. Of 12 patients in intensive care, nine are in serious condition, the emergency services said.Mark WalshJuanma Moreno, the president of Andalucía’s regional government, told reporters that experts were working hard to identify bodies. “But it’s not going to be quick,” he warned. “The technical work in those train cars — some are just a mass of steel — is going to be an intense, tough and complicated job.”ImageCredit...Ana Beltran/ReutersCarlos BarragánFrancisco Alamillos, 63, was reading in bed on Sunday evening when he received a message from Reina Sofía Hospital in Córdoba, where he works as a surgeon. “100 injured people,” the message read. Alamillos and his wife, also a surgeon, sped to the hospital, where the entrance was jammed with doctors coming to help. “I had never seen so many injured patients at the same time,” he said, adding that he saw pelvic fractures, lower-limb fractures, facial injuries, and more.José BautistaReporting from MadridSoon after the trains collided near Adamuz, Rafael Ángel Moreno, the town’s mayor, rushed over with a local police officer. “We encountered a terrible scene: people were trying to get out of the train, there were many injured,” he said in an interview, his voice quavering. “It was utter chaos.” He said one silver lining was an outpouring of solidarity among the town’s residents, who used their cars as ambulances and who brought food, water, tools and blankets. “The solidarity has been overwhelming,” the mayor said.Survivors of the crash describe hellish scenes.ImageMembers of the Spanish Civil Guard, along with other emergency personnel, work next to one of the trains involved in the accident near Adamuz, Spain, on Monday.Credit...Susana Vera/ReutersBodies tossed hundreds of yards from the wreckage. Passengers climbing out of the windows of overturned carriages. Residents loading blood-soaked survivors into cars that served as makeshift ambulances. Survivors and first-responders were shaken on Monday, the day after a high-speed train crash that killed at least 39 people and injured scores more in southern Spain, describing scenes of chaos but also a disturbing stillness in carriages where no one was moving. “People were trying to get out of the train, there were many injured,” Rafael Ángel Moreno, the mayor of Adamuz, where the accident took place said. He recounted in an interview how he and a local police officer were among the first people to reach the crash site on Sunday evening. It was “a terrible scene” he said, his voice quavering. “We are continuing to work to recover the last bodies.”Juanma Moreno, the regional president, said that DNA analysis was being used to identify some of the bodies. “The impact was so severe that we have found bodies hundreds of meters from the impact,” he said. “Some of the dead are difficult to recognize,” he added. “The impact was very strong, very strong.”The sound of the crash startled people within earshot. Andres Pastor Valverde, 53, a metalworker who lives nearby, was watching his son’s soccer game when he heard the crash, followed by a stream of sirens and alarms. When he saw on the news what had happened, Mr. Valverde rushed to the scene with his son, bringing blankets and a generator to help emergency workers see through the dark.Gonzalo Sánchez Aguilar, 46, happened to be driving near the crash site and went to help. As he loaded injured survivors into his car to rush them to a hospital, he said in an interview, “I saw a lot of dead bodies. “Really bad injuries.”As the day wore on, and Spanish leaders cleared their calendars to head to the scene, names of those killed began to emerge. Spain was riveted by the testimonies of survivors on television, radio and social media. Video shared by Spain’s civil guard showed emergency workers trying to break the glass of one of the train cars. It was like “an earthquake,” said Salvador Jiménez, a journalist with Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE, who was traveling in the first car of the train that derailed while traveling on the line from Málaga, on Spain’s southern coast, to Madrid, the capital. He said he felt the train had hit an animal or other obstruction on the track and the lights went out. A voice on the public-address system asked medical staff to go to car No. 5. The passengers, he said, broke windows with emergency hammers to get out. Outside, he said, he saw the last cars completely overturned and people were pulling passengers out through windows that were facing the sky. “Many people were shouting the names of passengers,” he said. Emergency workers, he said, asked passengers for their belts, perhaps to pull others out. He said that they trudged through the dark to safety, where they were given blankets, sandwiches and milk. Iryo, the private company that operated the Madrid-bound train, later arranged buses to take survivors to Madrid, he said.Amelia Nierenberg contributed reporting.Juanma Moreno, the president of the regional government of Andalucía, said that heavy machinery would soon be arriving at the collision site to lift the worst-affected train cars. “Unfortunately, it is very likely that more deceased individuals will be found under the tangle of metal,” he said on social media, adding that victims would be identified as quickly as possible.Samuel GranadosReporting from Adamuz, SpainGonzalo Sánchez Aguilar, 46, was driving nearby when the trains crashed. He loaded injured survivors into his car and rushed them to the hospital. “I saw a lot of dead bodies,” he said in an interview. “Really bad injuries.”ImageCredit...Samuel Granados for The New York TimesOne survivor said that she saw people dying but that she could not help. “We could see that they were slipping away, and there was nothing we could do about it,” Ana, a survivor from Málaga, said in an interview released by the Reuters news agency. Ana, who was traveling on one of the trains with her sister and dog, said she was pulled out of a window covered in blood.VideoCreditCredit...ReutersSamuel GranadosReporting from Adamuz, SpainAndres Pastor Valverde, 53, a metalworker, was watching his son’s soccer game when he heard the crash near his house, followed by a constant stream of sirens and alarms. When he saw on the news what had happened, Valverde rushed to the scene with his son, bringing blankets and a generator to help emergency workers.Samuel GranadosReporting from Adamuz, SpainResidents gathered at Adamuz City Hall for a minute of silence.