13 students die, several injured in Spanish coach crash

At least 13 European university exchange students, all of them women, have died in a motorway coach crash near Tarragona in north-east Spain.

Authorities said the vehicle, which was carrying 57 people, hit a railing and then swerved on to the other side of the road on the AP7 highway before colliding with a vehicle coming from the opposite direction.

Jordi Jane, the Catalan interior minister, said the victims of the crash early on Sunday morning were aged 22 to 29 and “the majority are Erasmus students of various nationalities.”

Emergency services confirmed that a further 30 people were injured.

The students on the coach represented 19 nationalities: France, the Netherlands, Finland, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, the UK, Italy, Peru, Bulgaria, Poland, Ireland, Palestine, Japan and Ukraine, though the nationalities of the dead have yet to be confirmed.

Catalan president Carles Puigdemont is reported to have confirmed all those who died are women before announcing two days of mourning.

Puigdemont, the Catalan president, said identification was difficult because the coach was one in a group of five returning to Barcelona after celebrating the Fallas festivities in Valencia and there were no passenger lists of who was on which coach.

Jané confirmed that 13 of 63 people involved in the accident were dead while the remainder did not appear to be seriously injured. The coach driver was among the survivors and tested negative for drugs and alcohol. He has driven for the company for 17 years and has never had an accident.

At about 6am on Sunday the driver apparently lost control near Amposta, Tarragona. The vehicle crossed the central reservation and collided with an oncoming car on a stretch of motorway notorious for accidents.

“Everything points to human error being the cause of the accident, though it’s too early to say,” Jané said. “There’s no reason to think there was a problem with the road itself.”

Spanish television showed images of the car, the front of which was smashed in, and the bus lying on its side after the accident.

The students were enrolled at the University of Barcelona as part of the European Erasmus exchange programme. They had travelled to Valencia to take part in the renowned 'Fallas' fireworks festival and were returning when the bus crashed. 

The accident is one of the deadliest in Spain in the past years. In November 2014, a bus carrying pilgrims fell into a ravine in the southeast, leaving 14 dead and another 41 injured.

Catalonia’s newly elected president, Carles Puigdemont, was due to travel to Paris on Sunday but cancelled the trip to go to the site of the accident.