There was a serious train accident in Andalusia, Spain: the derailment of two high-speed trains caused at least 39 deaths and over 150 injuries, 24 of them seriously. The episode occurred yesterday, Sunday 18 January, near Adamuz (Cordoba), around 7.45pm: train 6189 of the Iryo company, traveling from Málaga to Madrid with 317 passengers on board, derailed, ending up on the tracks of the opposite street, on which the long-distance train of the Alvia company was passing, carrying around 184 passengers. Due to the collision, the first two carriages of this second train fell down an embankment approximately four meters high.
The causes of the accident have not yet been clarified: the Spanish Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, described the accident as “extremely strange”, as it occurred on a straight stretch of track renovated last May.
As visible from the photos taken at the accident site, the Iryo train is a Frecciarossa ETR-1000 model: the Spanish brand, in fact, belongs to the ILSA company, of which Ferrovie dello Stato International is the majority shareholder (51%), which supplied the Iberian company with a fleet of 20 ETR-1000 trains, produced by Hitachi. In a press release, the Iryo company confirmed that the train involved in the accident had undergone its last inspection just four days earlier, on 15 January.
The Iryo company is the second railway operator in Spain in terms of volume of trains, frequency and number of passengers, representing the main competitor of the state company Renfe, of which Alvia (the company of the train that proceeded in the opposite direction to the derailed one) is part.
Following the accident, the Spanish government immediately activated the special emergency unit (the so-called UME, Unidad Militar de Emergencias, also activated during the DANA that hit Valencia in 2024), while the Civil Guard is sending DNA and fingerprint experts to speed up the identification of the victims. At the moment, the rescue procedures are still taking place and the Malaga-Madrid railway line was interrupted for the whole day today, Monday 19 January: unfortunately, the death toll is still provisional, given that it is difficult for rescue workers to access the area where the carriages of the Alvia train crashed.
Article being updated.
