Wednesday evening – all of Spain fell silent. A minute of silence was held in Madrid, Barcelona and the rest of the country. Just 10 months ago, 46 people died in another high-speed train accident, and now the tragedy has happened again.
Urda is a small town with only 2,500 inhabitants in the Toledo region. On Wednesday afternoon, the local priest José Manuel Pastrana tried to put into words the horror felt by the people, writes ARD. The pastor says that the sight he saw at the scene of the accident was “indescribable”: “Seriously injured people and others seeking help – some of them in severe pain, but also others whose pain is also great, but it is emotional, caused by the scale of a tragedy that is simply devastating".
"Something like this should never happen again"
Tanguy Binier, who regularly travels on this railway route, told the German media that he was on the stopped train of the private company "Irio", which was collided with by another train moving at high speed. "There were people trapped in the wreckage of the train, people with all kinds of horrific injuries. It was horrific. Something like this should never happen again", he said.
Prime Minister Sanchez, who visited the scene of the accident, expressed his sympathy for the people who lost their loved ones and friends. And this place is located only 250 kilometers along the same route, where a similar accident in January killed 46 people. “We have experienced two terrible railway tragedies in the same year,” said Prime Minister Sanchez and promised a thorough investigation into the causes of the tragedy. So far, many signs indicate that it was probably due to human error, but it is too early to make a final assessment, writes ARD.