Families hold out hope for loved ones missing after deadly Spain train crash

Families desperately searched for missing loved ones on Thursday, more than 24 hours after two high-speed trains collided in central Spain, killing at least 69 and injuring dozens of others.

Among them, actor César Vicente, who travelled 495 kilometres from his native Seville to Toledo in search of his father.

“I have my father, and I don’t know where he is. I hope to find him, oh my Lord,” he said.

He spent the night with many other families at a religious centre converted into a base for those affected by the disaster.

Vicente was with his mother and his aunt, all of whom were looking for his dad, who was sitting in seat 13A on the RENFE train that struck another operated by the private company Iryo, which had stopped on the tracks.

The family was among those who braved the cold to take a short walk on a chilly morning.

“I don’t want this to happen to anyone. This is unbearable,” he added. “This is hell.”

Online, relatives and friends flooded social media with desperate appeals for information on the whereabouts of their loved ones, posting photos or describing the clothes they were wearing when they boarded the trains bound for Seville and details about their physical appearance or the seat in which they were travelling.

In a post Wednesday on Instagram, Alejandra Marroquín told her followers that her sister Adriana, who was wearing dark blue clothes, was travelling in car 8 of the RENFE train and that they had been unable to contact her.

“We’re still praying, we don’t know anything,” Marroquín said in a post on Thursday morning, as search teams with sniffer dogs continued to look for victims.

“The entire government is working to respond to the victims’ families, shed light on the tragedy, and strengthen security so that this never happens again,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told reporters on Thursday morning.

This was the second high-speed rail disaster this year. In January, 46 people died after one train jumped the track and slammed into the side of another going the opposite way in southern Spain.

The high-speed rail network has been considered one of Spain’s crowning achievements. It is the world’s second-largest, after China’s. Until this year, it had not experienced a deadly crash since coming into service over three decades ago.

Search teams with sniffer dogs continued to look for victims on Thursday, a day after the collision in central Spain.

Cranes shifted the carriages as police and soldiers picked through the wreckage strewn down the gravel slope where at least three train carriages were tossed by the impact.

One more body was found overnight, taking the death toll to 69, according to the regional leader of Castilla La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page.

He added that 50 people remained hospitalised, while officials worked with family members to identify the dead.

“As a society, we have once again suffered a devastating blow, and we must adopt measures so that this doesn’t happen again,” Spain’s King Felipe VI said after visiting injured passengers at a hospital in Toledo.

Spain’s government declared three days of mourning starting Thursday.

A minute of silence was held at various points at noon, including with lawmakers outside the Parliament and by rail workers and union leaders in Madrid's main train station.

Second deadly train crash this year, just weeks out from general election

Spain’s second high-speed rail disaster this year, in which one train struck another from behind, killing 69 people, has raised fresh concerns about the safety of the country’s rail network ahead of the November 29 general election.

Sánchez had hoped to leverage a wave of discontent over housing costs and high rents when he called for early elections.

He now faces questions about the safety of the railways, along with criticism from right-wing parties of his liberal migration policies and accusations of corruption against his party and his wife, which both he and his wife deny.

Sánchez’s main rival, conservative Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, demanded a full investigation of the crash.

Alejandro Quiroga, a professor of political science at Madrid’s Complutense University, told The Associated Press that it is too early to tell if the crash will change the minds of many voters.

“This is not good news for the Socialist Party, but it may not hurt them very much because Spaniards generally don’t like it when politicians try to take advantage of tragedies,” Quiroga said.

“That could be changing, but up until now it is not seen positively.”

Government says human error caused the crash

Spain’s Transport Minister Óscar Puente said on Wednesday that the crash was caused by what he called the “inexplicable” order from a central command centre for Spain’s trains after a security system had failed.

Puente said that at 8.30am (6.30pm AEDT) the security system on a stretch of track stopped working due to a computer malfunction, causing all trains on that stretch to stop. At that point, the IRYO train was stopped, with the RENFE train 25 kilometres behind.

But minutes later the central command told the RENFE train to start running again without any speed restrictions, and it ended up colliding with the stationary IRYO train at 8.53am.

Spanish media on Thursday reproduced short audio clips of the controller ordering the train engineer to start moving.

Puente said that the train should never have been told to start moving again since a “stop signal” was still active on that line. And if it had, at least it should have been told to go at reduced speed.

Union leaders questioned the minister putting all the blame on one controller and criticised the leaking of the control room’s conversations to the media.

“The focus should not be on if there was a human error, but rather what is wrong with the system, what situations must be improved so that if there is a human error we don’t find ourselves in this situation,” said Pepa Páez of the CCOO union.

A judge also declared the crash site an investigation zone.