“The only thing I want is to see my brother”: in Toledo, the agonizing wait for the families of the victims of the train accident

Since the accident, Manuel hasn't let go of his phone. “Hello?”, he responds full of hope. “Sorry, I saw a long number and I thought it was the gendarmerie,” he finally said to his interlocutor. He is desperately waiting for news from his little brother. The latest toll after the train accident in Spain shows 69 deaths and could rise further. There are also injured people, many of whom have yet to be identified. Many families who are welcomed in Toledo, 100 kilometers south of Madrid, therefore find themselves without news of their loved ones like Manuel.

Manuel explains to us that Pépé, his little brother, "was on the Renfe train, in the first car". In other words, the one who hit the hardest against the Iryo stopped in the middle of the track just ahead. "The gendarmerie has started calling the relatives of those whose fate remains unknown. So I'm waiting for them to call me. We'll see if they send me to a hospital to go get my brother and kiss him," Manuel hopes.

This is Manuel's dearest wish: that his brother is being treated without having been identified yet. So as soon as he arrived in Toledo, Manuel went to the police station to take samples of his DNA to speed up the identification process. In the meantime, he shows the photo of his little brother, with the same gray hair as him, to all the survivors of the center where they have been housed since the accident.

"I feel tired. It's been two days of uncertainty now."

“It’s heavy. The nights are hard too,” he feels. However, he is not angry. "Angry? What for? These are things that are out of control. The only thing I want is to see my brother. There will be time to be angry, but right now, what good is that to me?" Small glimmer of hope, his brother was not traveling alone. “He was traveling with a small dog. The dog was found safe and sound by emergency services and returned to my sister-in-law. They took him out of the car,” he says. A sign perhaps. In any case, he does not lose hope and is still waiting for the liberating call.