“There’s a Spanish train that runs between

Guadalquivir and old Seville

And at dead of night the whistle blows

And people hear she’s running still”

[Chris de Burgh, Spanish Train]

Suddenly, along the banks of the Guadalquivir, the Spanish trains were no longer running.

Last night’s disaster, which occurred in Adamuz, in Córdoba province, Andalusia close to my current whereabouts, happened in two stages. First, the rear carriages of an Iryo high-speed service travelling north from Málaga derailed, and fell onto the adjacent tracks. Twenty seconds later, a southbound Renfe service destined for Seville and Huelva arrived, and collided with the prior derailment.

39 are confirmed dead and 152 are injured. Spain is gripped.

***

How a country covers tragedy in its own backyard reveals something of what it values.

In calamity, there is no time to perfect the script, polish the outfit and fine-tune those questions. What happens in front of the television cameras is likely real.

This morning, I have followed hours of coverage from Telecinco, a national, top-three channel.

The anchor, Ana Rosa Quintana, stands alone in a sparse studio. She is dressed in grey, wearing spectacles of dark blue frames. Four screens of on-the-scene reporters await as she makes her introduction. It is 12 hours since the disaster occurred.

We can see that she is distressed. She will later tell us that it brings back memories of the 2013 train crash in Galicia, in which 79 died. After two hours of live coverage, she will reflect that the only sliver of hope one can find is the manner in which disaster brings people together.

This is that story.

***

‘How are you?’, the reporter asks the Mayor of Adamuz, whose town (pop. 4000) is the locus of the emergency, and who has had no sleep.

The Mayor looks bedraggled but competent, and uses his response to comment on the victims and on the dedication of the emergency services. As the hand-held camera pans out, we see that the reporter has been holding his field microphone in one hand and the elbow of the Mayor in the other. It is a gesture of solidarity not intended for broadcast. Two professionals wrestling with the facts of carnage.

We switch to another scene – a beautiful young woman, distraught, with bandages on her cheek and forehead. She was in one of the trains. The girl relates the story of being separated, as the banging derailment began, from her sister and from her dog. The young woman is deeply upset, and has difficulty in finding words. Under obvious pressure to get-the-story-out, the reporter stays with her and listens to her broken sentences, without interruption. Her dog is missing. Her sister is safe, but what has become of her dog?

Brewing some coffee in my Córdoba apartment as the telly blares, a psychologist comes on screen. She is speaking from her home. Her task is to help us understand the shock of bereavement, and how people might speak with the families of the dead.

‘It’s not about what you say, but about what you shouldn’t say’, she began. I lost my focus for a moment, adjusting to the reality that dozens of people had lost their lives; normal people, returning after a normal weekend. And I was witnessing the ripples such an event creates across the Iberian peninsula.

Then came the influencer.

Lucas Merakio was on the train bound for Madrid, and had recorded footage on his phone from the wreck. He was now back in the capital, in studio with Ana Rosa. He wore his hair carefully, thickly combed, and his black and grey bomber jacket seemed new.

He described the team-work in the cold train carriages which stood still in the black of night. Word came from elsewhere on the train that the injured needed water. And so, an informal bucket-brigade began, passing people’s half-empty bottles to those who needed it.

His story was affecting, but Merakio’s tone irked me. I detected main-character syndrome in this little man who got a media-break through the happenstance of tragedy. Looking him up, his socials profile says he has 2.1 million followers. I expect that will be 2.5 million by sundown. Perhaps he will be creating ‘trauma farming’ content for some considerable time. I didn’t know such a thing exists. Somehow, I feel he does.

It was a busy day of ‘location farming’ at Telecinco Madrid.

Another of Ana Rosa’s on-the-scene reporters had located the Archbishop of Málaga, whose parish was the provenance of the first derailment. He was asked for his thoughts on camera.

Dressed in simple priestly attire, Jesús Fernández González declared that sometimes there are no words. He did not quote the Bible, nor attempt to wrap the disaster in philosophy. Rather, the Archbishop sympathised. Spain is surely one of the few remaining European countries whose instincts lead it to the Catholic Church in times of crisis. It was a moment of eloquent brevity worthy of a man named Jesus.

The coordinator of the Red Cross is now on-screen, his blazing red jacket contrasting with the black of the reporter. It is a winter morning. Both are outside, and each is cold. The Red Cross man speaks of all that he saw last night in the dark, and how difficult it is to reimagine now, in the brightness of morning. The reporter listens. When the conversation is over, he thanks him for his time, and suggests that the Red Cross man get something to eat – a bocadillo – and take some rest.

Telecinco’s coverage is relentless, varied, yet focused.

Ana Rosa is back in studio in Madrid, speaking with the Rafael Escudero, head of the National Rail-workers’ Union. In posing her question – how could this happen? – she momentarily loses her composure. We hear it rather than see it. Almost spontaneously, she is back.

As they discuss the various hypotheses, video images of the crash-scene are shown live from the helicopters of the Guardia Civil, with time-stamp and crosshairs superimposed on screen. I become aware of music in the background – the kind you hear when mourners file in, and before the funeral begins. It does not seem cheap. Rather, it is in tune.

***

And so, the story of the Andalusian train crash continues.

Spain struggles to take in all that has happened, doing so at many levels – emotionally, factually, functionally, legally. Each layer has its moment, although the valuing of human life seems at its core. Some are still trapped in the carriages of those Spanish trains.

Here on the river at Córdoba, there is tension in the air. Because the souls of the dead are neither fully counted, nor claimed.