Locals protest at Spanish government plans for rail crash victims’ funeral

More than 700 people, including those who volunteered to help the injured, attended a Mass for the dead in Adamuz on Sunday, where Bishop Jesús Fernández of Córdoba was chief celebrant.

Relatives of those injured in a rail crash in southern Spain condemned the Spanish government’s decision to hold a non-religious state funeral for the victims.

“You cannot have a ‘secular’ funeral in Huelva,” said Gracia, whose brother was gravely injured in the crash on 18 January. “The injured are in the hands of the Virgin Mary,” she said on the television programme En Boca de Todos (“On everyone’s lips”). “Huelva is Marian territory.”

The crash killed 45 passengers and left a further 150 injured, after two high-speed trains travelling at more than 200kph in opposite directions collided near the southern city of Córdoba.

The grandfather of a six-year-old girl who survived the crash, which killed her parents, sibling and cousin, called on social media for a “protest” to coincide with the state funeral, initially planned for Saturday 31 January.

King Felipe VI of Spain and his wife Queen Letizia were due to attend the ceremony in Huelva, home city of the majority of victims and survivors. It was postponed because a large number of the relatives of the casualties could not attend. The King and Queen and the first vice president of the Spanish government are to attend a funeral Mass in Huelva on Thursday 29, January.

More than 700 people, including those who volunteered to help the injured, attended a Mass for the dead in Adamuz on Sunday. The Bishop of Córdoba Jesús Fernández, who was chief celebrant, referred to the Book of Lamentations.

Fernández observed that after the accident “the faith of some has been shaken”. This had led to “more questions than answers [such as] how could God allow this to happen? Where was God?”

He continued: “God was right there in the carriages affected by the accident. He was there because many invoked his name on seeing the imminent danger.”

Fernández added that God had taken the 45 dead passengers “in peace” while “he healed the wounds of others, bringing them to … the hospital”. God, he said, “had made use of good Samaritans, some very young who … rescued the injured from the carriages and offered first aid and moved them”.

Julio Rodríguez, a 16-year-old dubbed “the Angel of Adamuz” for the help he gave many of the injured, read a psalm at the Mass. A statue of the village’s spiritual patroness, the Virgin Mary of the Sun, stood on a makeshift altar at the Mass which was celebrated in a municipal building. The parish priest concelebrated the liturgy.

Fidel Sáenz of Huelva said his mother died in the collision while praying the rosary. He attributed the survival of his two children, brother and nephew, who were in the same carriage, to his mother’s faith.

“She made her great love, Jesus of Nazareth, perform a miracle”, he said. Sáez’s injured brother had steered the children with his foot towards a carriage window through which they escaped.

The family were returning from a trip to Madrid organised by their grandmother to see The Lion King. “My mother used to speak to us of the love of God,” recalled Sáenz. “She would talk about how he came to save us and [say] and ‘Look how we treat him.’”

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