Agonizing wait for slow identifications: only 27 death notifications in 72 hours

The process of identifying the 69 deceased from the Urda train accident is being slow. This is recognized by sources close to the investigation, who defend that the process has been carried out uninterruptedly since Wednesday "with the greatest rigor" in the face of the brutal impact of the high-speed trains.

The relatives of the disappeared are suffering, as they have been waiting for three days, possibly for the worst news. As reported yesterday by the Integrated Data Center (CID), in 72 hours only 27 identifications have been notified to relatives, corresponding to 18 men and nine women.

The analogy with the Adamuz accident (Córdoba) led us to think, at first, that in the first 48 hours a good part of the identifications would have been completed. But it is not being like that.

“If there are 69 dead, there will be 69 dead and the 69 families that are here are practically one hundred percent sure that we are all relatives of the deceased,” Javier Barrio, Carmen Santa Ana's husband, denounced yesterday at the doors of the Priestly House of Toledo before heading into his third night in suspense.

The 69 autopsies have been carried out on the bodies in the morgue. Although yesterday the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, reported that there are 31 bags "with partial remains."

The identification report corresponds to the Civil Guard, who have previously collected DNA from the relatives who filed the 72 missing persons reports. There may be repeated complaints seeking the same person.

Nor are they hospitalized unidentified. The only injury that was difficult to identify was a woman, ultimately deceased, who was admitted to the Ciudad Real hospital without any documentation. Page also did not rule out that more bodies appear.

Although the slowness of the identifications is mainly explained by the state of the recovered bodies, the teams are also encountering difficulties due to the number of foreigners – of up to six nationalities – which have forced the Civil Guard to launch international cooperation processes to obtain fingerprints.

Despite everything, sources from the armed institute hope that the identification of all Spaniards will be completed today.