Families Demand Answers After Spain's Devastating Train Collision

Families Demand Accountability in Train Disaster

By Miguel Pereira and Guillermo Martinez

Details of the Train Collision

HUELVA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Some relatives of the 45 people killed in Spain's rail disaster vowed on Thursday to find out why the two high-speed trains collided, making their promise before survivors still wearing bandages and slings at a funeral mass.

Government Response and Criticism

"Only the truth will help us heal this wound. We will know the truth, we will fight so that there will never be another train," Liliana Saenz, who lost her mother, said at the service in the southern city of Huelva. King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia attended.

Impact on Victims' Families

Spain is trying to come to terms with the January 18 disaster near the village of Adamuz in southern Spain that caused one of the highest death tolls from a train crash in European history.

The government has been scrutinized over whether it has sufficiently invested in maintenance of Spain's vaunted railway system since the crash and other incidents that same week, including the death of a train driver in Catalonia.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Transport Minister Oscar Puente didn't attend the service.

A fracture in the rail appeared to have occurred before one of the trains headed for Madrid from Malaga derailed and was hit by a second, Huelva-bound train coming in the opposite direction 20 seconds later, authorities said. Puente said the gap could have been as short as nine seconds.

"We are the 45 families who would trade all the gold in this world, which is now worthless, for the chance to move the hands of the clock forward just 20 seconds," Saenz, flanked by her brother, told a congregation of hundreds of relatives of the victims and some of the survivors.

(Reporting by Miguel Pereira and Guillermo Martinez; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)