Spain Train Crash: Investigators Scrutinize Track Issues After Tragedy

The Spanish authorities were struggling on Tuesday to identify those killed in a collision between two high-speed trains that left at least 41 people dead on Sunday, as investigators focused on whether a problem with the track may have caused it. The crash, Spain’s worst railway disaster since 2013, has prompted days of national mourning and a rare call for political unity. But it has also shaken a country that depends on, and takes great pride in, its high-speed rail system, the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world, behind only China’s. More than a day after the crash in Adamuz, a town in southern Spain near the city of Córdoba, 23 autopsies had been completed, but only five bodies had been definitively identified with fingerprint matches, according to data coordinated by Spain’s Interior Ministry. The Spanish police said they had received missing-person reports for 40 people. The crash occurred when a privately operated train bound for Madrid partly derailed and two of its cars fell onto the opposite track, where they were struck by an incoming train. Many Spanish news reports on Tuesday focused on a photograph, released by the Guardia Civil, of investigators examining a particular stretch of track near the disaster site. The Commission for the Investigation of Railway Accidents has said that it is examining the general condition of the track as a possible cause of the crash. Óscar Puente, Spain’s transport minister, said in a radio interview on Tuesday that there had been “an initial break” in the track, but he added that “no technician is yet able to say whether it is a cause or a consequence” of the derailment. “If the rail broke first, we would need to find out why a solid steel rail broke,” he said.