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Adamuz train crash 'The crew had to smash the windows with hammers to get people out'Relatives of passengers were desperately trying to contact their loved ones on Sunday night; the phone line 900101020 was set up
Adamuz
Monday, 19 January 2026, 10:35 | Updated 10:53h.
Complicated and worrying night after the serious accident on the AVE Madrid-Malaga line. According to the story of Salvador Jiménez, who was travelling on the train, the passengers had just been served dinner when the collision occurred. "The sensation was that of an earthquake, the trays and glasses flew off," he explained in statements to several media outlets.
In his case, he was in the first carriage, in which there appeared to be no personal injuries, but he indicated that at least the last carriage was completely overturned in the collision. He said they had been waiting for instructions to get out in the most orderly way possible, while the crew of other carriages "had to break windows with hammers" so that passengers could get out.
He also pointed out that, after the impact, the help of medical workers was requested over the loudspeaker to attend to the injured. In the midst of the uncertainty, Jiménez regretted that there were hundreds of people at the stop who, like him, were waiting for instructions, asking every emergency services officer or staff member they met to find out where to go.
"They are going to take us to a municipal shelter, the civil guards are saying, so that we can stay there and spend the night," he said in statements to TVE. In this respect, he expressed surprise that, "bearing in mind that everything is computerised", the company itself had not sent a message to those affected to tell them what to do after the incident.
Some passengers have also reported on the social network X how they experienced the accident. One of the users, Carmen, explained that she was in carriage number 5 and that about ten minutes after the train left Cordoba "it started to shake a lot and derailed", after which the power went out.
She said that, at least apparently, the rest of the people travelling in her carriage were in good condition. The surprise came when she left the station, as she commented in a thread on the social platform, in which she shared images of the overturned carriages while the operatives were working. "This is worse than it looked from our car," she said.
Also, after 9.20pm she reported that volunteers were arriving in the area to take those affected to the town of Adamuz, where the derailment occurred. At around 11pm hours, according to the passenger, they had already started to take the passengers to the village in buses provided for this purpose.
The emergency services are deployed in the area, focusing on the rescue work and assistance to the injured people, of whom there are currently more than a hundred. According to the head of the Cordoba Consortium fire brigade on public television, there are still people trapped and the rescue work is proving "very complicated" due to the state of the carriages, which he described as "wreckage".
There are many relatives or friends of passengers who were travelling on the crashed trains who, through the networks, have asked for help to be able to contact their loved ones as they have no news of them. "We are desperate, they are not answering the phone", one of them told this newspaper. It should be noted that Adif has set up the following telephone line to attend to the relatives of those affected 900101020.