Claudia Rodriguez, the wife of Real Madrid and Spain player Marc Cucurella, was travelling on a train behind one of the services involved in a fatal collision in Spain on Wednesday.
Her train was forced to turn back to Madrid after the crash, which occurred on the route to Malaga. Rodriguez said she was shocked by what had happened and expressed her sympathy for the victims’ families and friends.
“I was on my way to Malaga on the next train and I am in shock,” she wrote on social media. “I would like to express my full support to the relatives and friends of the victims.”
Rodriguez later clarified that her train itself was not damaged and that those on board were safe. She said the distance between her service and the train involved in the collision had prevented it from being affected.
“I am fine, friends. My train was not affected at all because there was a significant distance between it and the train involved in the accident,” she said.
“We only had to turn around and head back to Madrid because we were travelling on the same track.”
She added that the incident had left her thinking about how narrowly her journey might have avoided a similar fate.
“I am shocked just thinking that if the accident had happened later, the same thing could have happened to my train,” Rodriguez said. “But that does not compare with what the people on the train involved in the accident went through.”
Death toll rises
At least 74 people were killed in the collision between two high-speed trains, according to a new death toll announced on Thursday by the Railway Accident Investigation Commission, which operates under Spain’s Ministry of Transport.
The crash happened on Wednesday morning in the municipality of Oropesa, in the Castilla-La Mancha region of central Spain.
According to information included in the report, a train operated by Renfe collided with a service run by the private operator Iryo. The Iryo train had stopped after an electronic fault affected the signalling system.
About 550 people were travelling on the two trains when the collision occurred. The scale of the disaster prompted Spain to declare 72 hours of national mourning.
The crash has caused widespread shock and is being described as one of the deadliest railway disasters in the country’s history.