Driver in Spanish train crash stonewalls police

A picture taken on Wednesday shows a wounded man identified as train driver Francisco Jose Garzon being evacuated after the train accident near the city of Santiago de Compostela.

DPA/Madrid

The driver of the Spanish train that derailed killing 78 people refused yesterday to answer questions by police at the hospital, police sources said.

Francisco Jose Garzon, 52, is under police custody on suspicion of having speeded at a curve, causing one of Europe’s worst rail accidents.

Rail management company Adif, meanwhile, said that Garzon should have applied the brakes 4km before reaching the spot at which the train derailed.

The high-speed Alvia train carrying 218 passengers from Madrid to Ferrol derailed at a curve and split apart late on Wednesday at Angrois, near Santiago de Compostela in the northwest. More than 80 people were injured.

Garzon suffered minor injuries.

The death toll was revised down to 78, from 80. Some of the remains had been misidentified as belonging to more than one person, forensic police said. Experts were working to identify six of the victims.

The engine driver, who has admitted to having piloted the train at 190kph along the curve where the speed limit was 80kph, could face 78 charges of homicide through imprudence.

The train’s security system alerted the driver at the point where he should have hit the brakes, Adif president Gonzalo Ferre said.

The stretch where the accident took place was lacking the more advanced European Train Control System, which automatically slows down trains if they go faster than the permitted speed.

Police could not examine the train’s black box until the judiciary had authorised them to do so, police chief Jaime Iglesias said.

Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria called for “prudence” in determining the cause of the accident, saying that a committee investigating it would “take all the time it needs”.

The train’s carriages were ripped open and the rails strewn with bodies. Seventy-three people were killed on the spot, while the others died in hospital.

The Alvia forms part of Spain’s 3,100km AVE high-speed network, which is billed as one of the most modern in the world.

But the accident showed that the network had often been built too quickly, leaving “black points” such as the curve in Angrois, the daily El Mundo reported.

The accident took place at a spot where the driver had to suddenly slow down to switch from high-speed to conventional tracks.

“We are waiting for the results of the Spanish investigation. We will see precisely what happened – if the (train) line was traced as it should have been,” European Commission spokesman Frederic Vincent said in Brussels.

Another spokesman for the EU’s executive, Joe Hennon, said that nevertheless, “figures show that train travel is still the safest form of transport”.

Spain needed to focus on security rather than expanding the AVE network, said Ricardo Riol, president of an association advocating improvements to public transport.

Ferre said the curve where the accident occurred was safe when approached with the correct speed.

Crown Prince Felipe and his wife Letizia visited victims at a hospital in Santiago de Compostela.

The crash is Spain’s deadliest involving the AVE network, and its worst rail accident since 1972, when a collision between two trains claimed 86 lives near Seville.