Claudia Rodriguez, the wife of Real Madrid and Spain player Marc Cucurella, was travelling on one of the trains behind the service involved in Spain’s deadly rail collision on Wednesday.
She said she had been forced to turn back to Madrid after the crash and described the experience as narrowly avoiding a possible disaster.
“I was on my way to Malaga on the next train, and I am in shock,” Rodriguez wrote on social media. “I would like to express my full support to the relatives and friends of the victims.”
Rodriguez later reassured her followers that she was safe and said her train had not been damaged.
“I am fine, friends. My train was not affected at all because there was a considerable distance between it and the train involved in the accident,” she added.
“We simply had to turn around and head back to Madrid because we were travelling on the same track.”
She said the timing of the crash had left her thinking about how the outcome could have been different.
“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 cannot be compared with what the people on the train involved in the accident went through.”
At least 74 people were killed in the collision between two high-speed trains, according to an updated toll announced on Thursday by the Rail Accident Investigation Commission, which operates under Spain’s Ministry of Transport.
The crash happened on Wednesday morning in the municipality of Urda, in the central Castilla-La Mancha region. 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, the report said.
About 550 people were travelling on the two trains when they collided. The scale of the incident led the Spanish government to declare 72 hours of national mourning.
The crash caused widespread shock and was described as one of the deadliest railway disasters in Spain’s history.
