"I Was Thrown While Drinking Coffee"... 69 Dead in Spain Train Collision

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Two high-speed trains collided in Spain yesterday (October 28), leaving 69 people dead so far. Two South Korean nationals were also among the injured. The same rail line experienced an accident last January that claimed 46 lives.

Correspondent Kwon Yeongin reports from Paris.

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White and red trains are derailed and tangled together.

Three cars of the red train are severely damaged and overturned.

At around 9 a.m. local time on the 28th, a train collision occurred in the Toledo region, south of Madrid, Spain.

[Rafael Barcelo / Passenger: I was having breakfast and drinking coffee when I felt a very strong impact. And all of us were thrown up into the air.]

Out of 544 passengers on board, at least 69 were killed and over 100 others were injured.

Fifteen people are in critical condition.

The South Korean Embassy in Spain stated that 10 South Koreans were aboard the train, and two sustained minor injuries and received hospital treatment.

[Lim Soo-suk / South Korean Ambassador to Spain: One person successfully underwent surgery yesterday and is currently in a general ward. The other person has already been discharged and has headed to their original destination.]

Spanish authorities explained that six trains had been halted along a 63-kilometer section due to a signaling system issue, when a state-run train—instructed by the central control center to resume operations—struck the stationary private train from behind.

A system failure had occurred, requiring operations to be restricted to a maximum speed of 40 km/h, but this was not observed.

[Private Train Passenger: We had been stopped for 5 or 10 minutes, and I simply cannot understand how information telling them to stop was not transmitted to the train following behind us.]

The Spanish government designated a three-day national mourning period and canceled major events, including professional soccer matches.

The same route saw a major train collision last January as well, which killed 46 people and injured 150 others.

Although Spain boasts Europe's longest high-speed rail network and invests more than 2 trillion won annually, the proportion allocated to maintenance budget remains around 16%, lower than other European countries.

Critics point out that while the country focused on expanding its rail network and increasing speed, inspections, maintenance, and safety facility investments for existing infrastructure may have been pushed to the background.

(Video Editing: Lee Seung-yeol)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.