The Malaga cardiologist that saved lives but lost his in Cordoba train crash

Zoom

The 30-year-old man who worked in the La Paz hospital in Madrid was a brilliant medical student, having achieved the highest academic record in his year

Juan Cano

Wednesday, 21 January 2026, 10:22

The void left by Jesús is now a mobile phone with a Rosalía song halfway through and the message "keep playing" frozen in time. This is all that his sister Natalia has found of him. She has searched tirelessly since Sunday, when she learned that several carriages of the Iryo train on which he was travelling to Madrid had derailed and crashed into an Alvia train near Adamuz (Cordoba).

Jesús Saldaña, 30, is among the 42 confirmed fatal victims of the crash. Before his family knew that he was among the bodies discovered in the aftermath, they had launched a social media search campaign, hoping that he was alive somewhere - in a hospital, unconscious and yet to be identified.

Hope faded throughout Tuesday, when they learned, first from the press and then from an unofficial source, that Jesús was among the confirmed victims. "People are writing to me to offer their condolences, but no one has called us to officially tell us that he is dead," Natalia told SUR, her voice breaking on the other end of the phone.

Jesús had known he wanted to be a doctor practically since he was a child. At the age of eight, when he learned that his maternal grandfather had a heart disease, he decided he wanted to study medicine to cure him. He grew up in Nueva Málaga and studied in Gamarra, where he was one of the best students, if not the best, to have ever attended the school. "He was always a very good kid. From his first nursery school teacher, Paqui, all his tutors told us he was a wonderful child," Natalia said.

Jesús was not just good - he was brilliant. He received the special award for the best academic record in secondary school, passed all his subjects with honours and got the highest mark (13.81) in his 2013 university entry exams, which allowed him to easily get into medical school. At the graduation party, his classmates read him a letter they had written together thanking him for always being willing to help them.

Jesús followed the same path throughout his university studies. He finished with the best academic record in his class and ranked 44th in the MIR, which allowed him to enter the cardiology department at Hospital La Paz, where he integrated perfectly and improved patient information management, because he also did a master's degree in data management. "He could just as easily write a computer programme and treat an acute myocardial infarction," Natalia said. Medical degrees run in the family, as she is a paediatrician.

Jesús was happy in the Madrid hospital, but his plans were to return to his hometown, to his family. The first step in that return journey had already been taken by Elena, his fiancé, who accepted a contract to work as a gastroenterologist at Hospital Regional in Malaga. The couple were to be married on 22 August this year, the day before Jesús's birthday. "They had already booked everything. His fiancé was his light and his guiding star, she's as kind as he was," Natalia said.

On Sunday afternoon, while he was travelling to Madrid in carriage 8 of the Iryo train, his uncle Ricardo was checking the Idealista website for flats in the Pedregalejo district, hoping to find something affordable so that his nephew could move in as soon as possible. Until then, weekends were all they had. "If he wasn't on duty, he would come back to spend them with his fiancé and his family," Ricardo said.

That is why he was in Malaga on Friday, 16 January. On Saturday, he celebrated his close cousin Juan's birthday and then, on Sunday, he had lunch with his sister and his parents. Broken with grief, Natalia recalled how her daughters were arguing over who would sit next to their uncle. The younger girl did not want to leave his side and told her mother that she was going to Madrid with Jesús.

Natalia was overwhelmed by memories while searching for the best words to capture who her brother was and what he meant to her. "My boy," she said, the two words reflecting her love for a kind younger brother who liked Ed Sheeran's music, the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings books, mystery series and board games, which he played with his nieces. He also enjoyed travelling with Elena and his friends, all of whom will hold the memory of Jesús forever.