ADAMUZ: At least 40 people died in southern Spain after a high-speed train derailed and collided with an oncoming one on Sunday night in one of the worst railway accidents in Europe in the past 80 years.

Twelve were in intensive care after the accident near Adamuz in the province of Cordoba, about 360 km (223 miles) south of Madrid, according to emergency services. Experts studying the crash site say a faulty rail joint may be key to determining the cause of the crash.

“The train tipped to one side... then everything went dark, and all I heard was screams,” said Ana Garcia Aranda, 26, who was travelling back to Madrid and was being treated at a Red Cross centre in Adamuz. Limping and wrapped in a blanket, her face covered with plasters, she described how fellow passengers dragged her out of the train covered in blood.

Firefighters rescued her pregnant sister from the wreckage and an ambulance took them both to hospital.

There were people who were fine and others who were very, very badly injured. You had them right in front of you and you knew they were going to die, and you couldn’t do anything, she said.

The collision occurred in a hilly, olive-growing region which could only be accessed by a single-track road, making it difficult for ambulances to enter and exit, Iigo Vila, national emergency director at the Spanish Red Cross, said.

Emergency teams were struggling to bring in heavy machinery that could lift the wreckage to get access to more of the dead, the Andalusia region’s President Juan Manuel Moreno said.

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez cancelled his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and Transport Minister Oscar Puente visited the crash site on Monday. Police drone footage showed how the trains came to a standstill 500 metres apart. One train’s carriage was split in two, and the locomotive was crushed like a tin can.

Experts studying the crash site found a broken joint on the rails, which created a gap between the rail sections that widened as trains continued to travel on the track, according to a source briefed on initial investigations into the disaster. The technicians believe the faulty joint could prove important in identifying the precise cause of the accident, the source said.

Spain’s Commission of Investigation of Rail Accidents (CIAF), which has been tasked with the overall investigation into the causes of the disaster, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2026