Tragedy Strikes: 40 Killed in Andalucia Train Crash

Salvador Jiménez was on a high-speed train to Madrid on Sunday evening, speeding through the arid countryside of southern Spain, when the carriage shook so violently that he thought it had hit an animal on the tracks. The lights went out. A voice on the public-address system made a plea for medical assistance. Soon the passengers were breaking windows with emergency hammers to escape, Mr. Jiménez, 37, said in an interview. The collision turned out to be with another train, killing at least 40 people in the deadliest railway crash in Spain since 2013. Two cars at the back of Mr. Jiménez’s Madrid-bound train derailed near Adamuz, a town in southern Spain, where they crossed onto the track of an oncoming southbound train, according to a preliminary report by official investigators. Seconds later, at around 7:45 p.m., the southbound train slammed into the carriages, and careened down a 12-foot embankment, the preliminary report said. “It was like an earthquake,” said Mr. Jiménez, a broadcast journalist. The crash left Spaniards in grief and shock, shaking a country that has come to depend, and take great pride in, its sprawling and efficient national rail system, the largest in Europe and second largest in the world, behind China.