Tragic High-Speed Train Collision in Southern Spain: Key Details

Overview of the Train Collision

MADRID, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Sunday's train collision and derailment in southern Spain killed at least 39 people and left 122 injured, with officials highlighting the "tremendously strange" nature of the accident on a straight stretch of railway.

Details of the Accident

Here is what we know so far:

Official Responses and Investigations

The accident happened at 7:45 p.m. (1845 GMT) near the town of Adamuz in the province of Cordoba, about 360 km (223 miles) south of the capital Madrid.

Previous Safety Concerns

It involved two high-speed  trains, one operated by the private consortium Iryo and the other by Alvia, run by Spain's public railway company Renfe.

The last two out of eight carriages of the trademark-red Iryo train going from Malaga to Madrid derailed on a straight stretch of railway and hit the oncoming Alvia, causing the latter's first two carriages to derail and fall down an up to five-metre (16.4 feet) embankment.

WHAT OFFICIALS ARE SAYING

There was a 20-second interval between the first derailment and the impact, too short to activate the automatic braking system, according to Renfe chief Alvaro Fernández Heredia, who also said human error was practically ruled out.

"It must have been some kind of failure in the rolling stock or the infrastructure, and that will take time" to investigate, he said.

Officials said the Alvia had apparently hit the derailed carriages or undercarriage debris of the Iryo. The 27-year-old driver of the Alvia train died in the crash, the Renfe chief said.

The Iryo train was carrying around 300 people and had just left the historic city of Cordoba. Its speed at the moment of the accident was 110 kph, well below the maximum limit of 250 kph on that stretch.

The oncoming train, carrying 187 people, was travelling at a speed of 205 kph, Renfe said. 

The derailed Alvia carriages had 37 people in the first and 16 in the second. Most of the dead and injured came from the first two Alvia carriages.

Transport Minister Oscar Puente said that the Iryo was less than four years old and that the railway track had been completely renovated last May with an investment of 700 million euros ($813.5 million). Iryo said the train was last inspected on January 15.

Puente called the accident "tremendously strange" and said that had it not been for the oncoming train, the derailment would have likely caused no deaths.

Jose Trigueros, president of the Association of Road Engineers, said his preliminary analysis of images and information released by the authorities suggested "failure of the undercarriage of the back units" of the Iryo train.

PREVIOUS PROBLEMS

Train drivers union SEMAF had warned state-owned rail infrastructure administrator  ADIF in a letter last August of severe wear and tear to the railway track where the two trains collided, according to a copy of the letter seen by Reuters, saying potholes, bumps, and imbalances in overhead power lines were causing frequent breakdowns and damaging the trains.

ADIF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to a Reuters review of alerts on ADIF's X account, it has previously reported problems with infrastructure at Adamuz, from signalling failures to issues with overhead power lines, that caused delays to high-speed trains between Madrid and Andalusia 10 times since 2022.

The government was criticised last year for a series of delays on the network, caused by power outages and the theft of copper cables from the lines. The network is vulnerable to cable thefts as it crosses large swathes of empty countryside.

Spain's high-speed railway network, with 3,622 km of tracks, is the largest in Europe and the second-biggest in the world after China, according to ADIF.

Spain opened up its high-speed rail network to private competition in 2020 in a bid to offer low-cost alternatives to Renfe's AVE trains.

Iryo is a joint venture between Italian state railway operator Ferrovie dello Stato, airline Air Nostrum and Spanish infrastructure investment fund Globalvia. It began operating in November 2022, starting with the Madrid-Barcelona route and expanding to other major cities. 

The Iryo ETR1000 train is manufactured by the partnership of Hitachi Rail-Bombardier in Europe for Ferrovie's unit Trenitalia. Renfe's Alvia trains are manufactured by local makers CAF and Talgo.

(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee, Aislinn Laing, David Latona, Emma Pinedo, Andrei Khalip; Editing by Sharon Singleton)