Spanish train disaster victims flew through windows and were found hundreds of yards away, with more

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Spanish train disaster victims flew through windows and were found hundreds of yards away, with more than 39 feared dead - as mystery over what caused 'truly strange' crash grows

Daily Mail
By SABRINA PENTY
17 January 2026

Passengers on board two high-speed trains which derailed in Spain last night were catapulted through windows, with their bodies found hundreds of yards from the crash site, officials have said.

Spain's Transport Minister Oscar Puente said the cause of the crash remains a mystery, calling the deadly collision a 'truly strange' incident because the tracks had been renovated just last year.

Police on Monday said at least 39 people are confirmed dead, while efforts to recover the bodies are continuing, and the death toll is likely to rise. One of the train drivers is among those killed.

The crash occurred on Sunday evening when the tail end of a train carrying some 300 passengers on the route from Malaga to the capital, Madrid, went off the rails at 7.45pm. An incoming train, which was travelling from Madrid to Huelva and carrying nearly 200 passengers, slammed into the derailed vehicle.

The second train took the brunt of the impact, according to Puente, after the collision knocked its first two carriages off the track and sent them plummeting down a 13ft slope.

Puente said that it appeared the largest number of the deaths occurred in those carriages.

At the moment of the collisions, both trains were travelling at over 120mph, according to the Spanish Transport Ministry.

Both trains were travelling well under the speed limit of 155mph with one going at 127mph and the other at 130mph, according to the president of Spain's national state-owned railway company Alvaro Fernandez. He also said that 'human error could be ruled out.'

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15476945/Spanish-train-disaster-victims-flew-windows-hundreds-yards-away-dead-mystery-truly-strange-crash.html

[Kamaji]

I wonder if it was sabotage?

[DB]

A picture at the links shows a couple feet of tracking missing. It looks like it either it was cut out or it was pulled apart where two rails were joined.

[Kamaji]

A picture at the links shows a couple feet of tracking missing. It looks like it either it was cut out or it was pulled apart where two rails were joined.

Could it have been damaged in the collision itself?

[Fishrrman]

DB wrote:
"It looks like it either it was cut out or it was pulled apart where two rails were joined."

Rails can break or come apart at joints (they call these "pull-aparts"), but a section a couple of feet long wouldn't just remove itself.

When such things happen, track circuits will go down, forcing oncoming trains to reduce to a very low speed (typically 15mph).

Having said that, rails have been known to break under the weight/momentum of a passing train - often with bad results.

The trains (at least the high-speed one) probably have forward-facing cameras in the cab, "looking ahead" and recording what the engineer/driver sees. Amtrak had these on all road engines back when I was still running them.

These days, there are "inward-facing" cameras as well, watching the engineer at all times. Glad I'm not working there any more.

I recall another bad high-speed train wreck in Spain some years' back, that one was attributed to operator error.

If there were nose cameras, and if the video can be recovered, that will reveal what transpired in the moments before the accident.

[Wingnut]

I'm not a train expert but I did watch Run Away Train once,  Looks to me the track failed and the train derailed and slammed into the other train.