Spain has suffered its second deadly rail accident in just days, after a commuter train near Barcelona ploughed into the rubble of a collapsed wall, killing one person and injuring dozens.
The incident occurred on Tuesday, January 20th in the municipality of Gelida, about 40 kilometres west of Barcelona, when a retaining wall fell onto the tracks. According to Catalonia’s civil protection agency, the collapse caused a passenger train to derail after ploughing into the rubble. The regional interior minister, Núria Parlón, confirmed that one passenger was killed and 37 others were injured, several of them seriously. Five of the injured were reported to be in critical condition.
Emergency workers used torches to survey the wreckage of the derailed train carriage, which had turned into a mass of crumpled metal. Spain’s rail infrastructure operator Adif stated that a storm caused the wall to collapse and said commuter train services in the area would remain suspended.
The crash came just two days after Spain’s deadliest rail accident in more than a decade, when two high-speed trains collided in the southern region of Andalusia. That collision killed 42 people and injured more than 120, with 37 still receiving hospital treatment. Earlier on Tuesday, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia visited the site of the Andalusia crash and later met injured survivors at a hospital in Cordoba.
