BARCELONA: Spain’s railway system was under scrutiny on Wednesday (Jan 21) after a commuter service crashed near Barcelona, days after at least 43 people were killed in a collision between two high-speed trains.
A train driver died and 37 people were injured – several seriously – in the latest incident late on Tuesday. The commuter train hit a retaining wall that fell onto the tracks in Gelida near Barcelona, regional officials said.
Railway operator Adif said the wall likely collapsed due to heavy rainfall that has swept across Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia in recent days.
Spain was already reeling from Sunday’s collision in the southern region of Andalusia, the country’s deadliest rail accident in more than a decade.
Another body was recovered on Wednesday at the site of the accident near the village of Adamuz, bringing the confirmed death toll to 43, authorities said.
“This is too much,” the head of the conservative main opposition Popular Party, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, wrote on X. His party demanded an “immediate clarification” of the state of the nation’s railways.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday before the Barcelona-area crash, far-right party Vox’s spokeswoman Pepa Millan said Spaniards were now “afraid to get on a train”.
Raluca Maria Pasca, a 45-year-old waitress, said she had noticed that high-speed trains “have been shaking lately”.
“I’ve felt it myself. They need to fix the problem,” she told AFP at the train station in the southern city of Cordoba.
Alexandra Leroy, a restaurant owner from France who was on holiday in Cordoba, said she was now “a little” worried to take the train.
“If it just happened in Barcelona too, twice, that’s a lot,” she added.