The only person killed in the Barcelona Rodalies accident is Fernando Huerta, a 27-year-old young man from Seville who was in the Catalan capital completing his internship period at Renfe. Before doing the internship in that company, the young man had worked in a private railway transport company. In 2022 he graduated in Journalism from the University of Seville.
Huerta’s family received the news during the early hours of the morning, when at the time of the accident, the Sevillian was in the cabin with three other colleagues, who were injured as a result of the fall of a wall. Carlos Cabrera, president of the Sevilla fan club Trianafans, remembers him as a “happy and very active” person. “When we saw the accident, we started calling him because we knew he was in Barcelona, but he didn’t pick up the phone. Neither did his family. Then, other members of the group who work at Renfe confirmed to us that he was on the train. At five in the morning they already reported that he was the deceased,” he says.
Huerta had been in Barcelona for a few months, the destination that had corresponded to him to do his internship as a train driver after passing the opposition at Renfe. “He came regularly to Seville and used to attend the previews of the matches that we organized both here and when the team played away,” says Cabrera. The supporters are going to feel their loss. “We met a lot,” recalls its president.
“My deepest condolences to all the family and friends of this young man from Seville who was stationed in Barcelona to complete his training as a train driver. For them goes the hug of an entire city that is united in this tragedy and a pain that we all share. Rest in peace,” wrote the mayor of Seville, José Luis Sanz, in a published message. The City Council of Seville has called for a minute of silence at noon in his honor. The president of the Andalusian Junta, Juan Manuel Moreno, has also referred to the death of the young train driver: “This shows that the tragedy does not go away,” he said in reference to the Adamuz railway accident.
The Faculty of Communication of the Seville university has also expressed its condolences and has remembered “fondly” his time at the university center.
Sevilla FC and the Macarena Brotherhood, of which he was a brother, have also mourned Huerta’s death. “The Brotherhood joins in the mourning of all of them, sharing their sadness and accompanying them with fraternal closeness and prayer, trusting that the Virgin of Hope will sustain and protect them in such difficult moments,” they have published on the brotherhood’s profile in X.
⚫ The Brotherhood of the Macarena, on behalf of its Elder Brother and Governing Board, wishes to express its deepest regret for the death of our young brother Mr. Fernando Huerta Jiménez (27 years old), victim of the tragic accident that occurred on a train on the Rodalies line R4 to…
— Brotherhood of the Macarena (@Hdad_Macarena)
The ongoing investigation will determine who of the three train drivers or the deceased trainee driver was driving the train at the time of the fatal accident. According to initial investigations, the most serious impact occurred on the right side (left side seen from the outside) of the cabin. The exact place where the driver’s seat is located.
The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, indicated in an interview on Telecinco that in Gelida there was “the collapse of a wall as a result, it seems, of the rains, which caused a landslide on the slope.” Puente has mourned the death of the Sevillian train driver, has conveyed his condolences to the family of the deceased and trusts in the speedy recovery of the injured.
