At least 13 people were killed yesterday morning when the bus they were travelling in crashed in northeastern Spain as they were returning from festivities in the city of Valencia.
The incident took place at about 6am near the Catalan town of Freginals. Local authorities said the vehicle, carrying 61 people, hit a barrier on the right-hand side of the road, before veering across into the wrong lane and rolling on its side. A car coming in the other direction then struck the back of the bus.
A total of 43 people were injured, although some of them only lightly.
Jordi Jané, spokesman for the Catalan regional government, said that the authorities believed the incident had been caused by human error, rather than a technical fault.
Some Spanish media reported that investigators believed the driver may have fallen asleep at the wheel.
Students
The bus was one of five carrying a large group, mainly made up of foreign university students on an Erasmus exchange, back to Barcelona from the annual Fallas festivities in Valencia. As of yesterday evening, a team of forensic experts were still working to confirm the identities and nationalities of those killed. However, the interior minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, said that they were all female.
Three Irish students were among the 34 passengers who were treated in hospital for their injuries. It is believed that there were also people from the UK, Scandinavia, eastern Europe, New Zealand and Japan on the bus that crashed.
The Irish nationals escaped largely without injury. Ireland’s Ambassador to Spain, David Cooney, said two of the students were brought to hospital but were later discharged. The third did not require hospital treatment.
The three were students at University College Cork, and a college spokeswoman confirmed none was seriously injured. She added that UCC’s international studies department was liaising with the students and their families following the crash.
"The Embassy is trying to establish the facts of the situation," Mr Cooney told The Irish Times. "We have two young Irish people who have received injuries which don't appear to be life-threatening."
Identification
Regarding the identification of those killed, he added: “This bus was one of five buses that were on this particular trip so given the nature of the situation you couldn’t be sure of who was on what bus.”
A young man from the Netherlands who was on the bus that was involved in the incident told El País newspaper that it "moved from one side to the other" just before crashing. "After the crash, there was shouting and panic everywhere," he said.
The driver avoided serious injury and spent most of the day in a police station in the nearby town of Tortosa. Alcohol and drugs tests carried out on him both came up negative and he was due to give a formal statement last night. The company that owns the bus, Autocares Alejandro, said that the driver had not had any accidents during 17 years driving for it.
The firm also said the bus was three years old and had been well maintained.
“We are deeply upset,” said the mayor of Freginals, Josep Roncero. “We have discovered that those who died were very young and this is a very sad day.”
He was one of several local politicians who yesterday highlighted the notorious reputation of this particular stretch of road. “It’s a black spot,” he said. “It’s a straight line and whenever there are accidents they always happen at that spot.”
The Catalan government announced two days of official mourning.
