Several Americans were injured, according to the State Department, which did not provide further details.
Jacksonville firefighter Josue Garcia-Otero was on board with seven family members.
“We first got to safety and then began treating other seriously injured patients,” Garcia-Otero said in a news release issued by the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department. “My wife is a nurse and she helped me too.”
Promising an investigation and improvements to avoid a similar tragedy in the future, Sánchez said it was clear we needed to strengthen the safety of our rail service to restore confidence in our high-speed rail.
It is “not acceptable for a country like Spain to suffer two high-speed train accidents in the same year,” he said, referring to an incident in January in which 46 people died after a train jumped the track and hit another train going in the opposite direction in the south of the country.
Both accidents involved trains operated by the public company RENFE and the private company IRYO.
His Transport Minister, Óscar Puente, said the accident was caused by what he called an “inexplicable” order from a central control center for Spain’s trains after a safety system failed.
Puente, who is facing calls to resign, said the train’s engineers were not to blame, but instead a safety system stopped working due to a computer malfunction, causing all trains on the line to stop around 8:30 a.m. local time (5:30 a.m. ET).
Shortly after, he said central command asked the RENFE train to start running again without any speed restrictions, adding that this should never have happened and it ended up colliding with the stationary IRYO train at 8:53 a.m.
Riot police used tear gas outside its transport ministry in Madrid on Wednesday evening after far-right protesters gathered outside and pushed against a cordon set up by police. Some threw flares and other objects while others chanted slogans against Puente and Sánchez.
It is unclear what effect this accident will have on Sánchez’s political ambitions. The prime minister has called a snap election next month after his socialist party suffered several defeats on legislation aimed at solving the country’s housing crisis.
His minority government had introduced two decree laws aimed at protecting tenants in the rental market after nationwide protests following the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her Madrid apartment. Maricarmen Abascal, who used a wheelchair, was eventually allowed to return but died in hospital before she could do so.
Sánchez, who took power in 2018, weathered several crises during his term, including the Covid-19 pandemic and rising global inflation.
But he has faced attacks from right-wing parties over his liberal migration policies and accusations of corruption against his party and his wife, which both deny, and polls show he faces an uphill battle to win votes before next month’s elections.
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