Nineteen pensioners died and 20 were injured, five of them seriously, today when their coach veered off a motorway and crashed in the southern Spanish province of Huelva, police said.
Eighteen passengers died at the site of the accident and the 19th died at a local hospital, they said.
About 20 people were taken to hospital as rescue workers struggled with the help of a crane to free at least five victims trapped in the wreckage.
The coach was taking the pensioners from Tarragona, in northeastern Spain, on a tour around the Huelva region when the accident occurred around 1 p.m. near the town of La Palma del Condado.
The driver, who tested negative to an alcohol test, survived the crash but was not able to explain the cause of the accident to police other than to say that no other vehicle was involved.
The mayor of La Palma, interviewed on Spanish national radio, said the bend in the road where the accident took place was not considered particularly dangerous and that weather conditions were good.
Spanish television showed pictures of the partially destroyed coach and debris strewn across the motorway.
Among the debris were several souvenirs from the Church of Our Lady of the Great Sorrow, a religious shrine the passengers had just visited.
The bus was big enough to carry 55 passengers but was not full at the time of the accident as many people had got off at a previous stop in the tour, police said.
The bodies of the victims were taken to an emergency morgue set up in a local gymnasium, where a team of psychological counsellors was ready to receive the bereaved families.
Several politicians were scheduled to visit the crash site, including the interior and employment ministers.
Security on buses was the topic of a nation-wide debate in July last year, following the death of 28 people, most of them teenagers, on a bus trip to summer camp. Their bus had collided with a truck transporting live stock.
AFP