People in Adamuz rushed to help when two trains smashed into each other and say they will never forget what they saw

Just after 2.45pm on Monday, a huge yellow-and-green crane lorry swung off the main road that cuts through the forested hills of eastern Andalucía and beetled down a track to begin picking up the enormous, wrecked pieces of Spain’s worst rail disaster in more than a decade. Behind it rolled a support lorry and a convoy of police cars.

A few minutes’ drive away, between groves of olive and oak trees, lay the two stricken trains that had smashed into each other on Sunday night, killing at least 39 people and critically injuring at least 12 others. As investigators and Guardia Civil officers walked up and down the line by the twisted carriages, the nearby town of Adamuz was in the early stages of trying to process what had happened a few kilometres from its outskirts.