Spain train driver detained over crash

The driver of a train that derailed in Spain is being questioned after admitting to speeding. Source: AAP

SPANISH police have announced they have formally detained the driver of a fast-moving train that flew off the tracks, killing at least 78 people, saying he was suspected of "recklessness".

"He has been detained since 8.00pm (on Thursday). He is accused of crimes related to the accident," Jaime Iglesias, the police chief in the northwestern region of Galicia where the accident happened, told reporters, on Friday.

Asked at a news conference in Santiago de Compostela why the driver was being detained, Iglesias said: "For recklessness."

A Spanish judge on Thursday ordered police to question the hospitalised driver following reports he was going twice the speed limit when the train derailed on a sharp bend on Wednesday evening just outside the pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela.

The driver - identified by local media as 52-year-old Francisco Jose Garzon Amo - has since been under police surveillance in hospital while being treated for light injuries sustained in the accident.

He has not yet been charged with a crime and police are still waiting to question him.

The driver, while trapped inside his cab immediately after the accident, told railway officials by radio that the train had taken the curve at 190km/h, unidentified investigation sources told leading daily El Pais.

The speed limit on that section of track is 80km/h.

The grey-haired driver, pictured in the media with blood covering the left side of his face after the crash, has been with Spanish state railway Renfe for 30 years and has 13 years' experience as a driver, the rail firm said.

The train's data recording "black box" and other documents were passed over to the judge in charge of the investigation on Thursday.

Attention has so far centred on Garzon Amo, one of two drivers on the train, after media reports described him as a speed freak who once gleefully posted a picture on his Facebook page of a train speedometer showing it was travelling at 200km/h.

The El Pais newspaper, citing sources close to the investigation, said the driver stated immediately after the crash that he had been travelling at 190km/h on a curve with a speed limit of 80km/h.

"I am going at 190! I hope no one died because it will weigh on my conscience," he reportedly told supervisors over the radio while trapped inside the cab after the eight-carriage train flew off the tracks on a curve at 8.42pm.

Dramatic video footage from a security camera showed the fast-moving train, which was travelling from Madrid to the port of Ferrol, slamming into a concrete wall at the side of the track as the engine overturned.

On Friday, the paper reported the driver was unable to brake in time.

"The railway warning systems detected that Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, the driver of the Alvia train that departed Madrid, was travelling at 190 kilometres an hour when it should not exceed 80," El Pais wrote.

"The driver acknowledged that the alarm went off in the control panel and he tried to brake but was not able to avert the tragedy," the newspaper added.

Spanish police slightly lowered the death toll to 78, saying they had identified 72 of the fatalities.

"At the moment the figure is 78 dead, 72 have been identified and six remain to be," Galicia police chief Jaime Iglesias told a news conference in Santiago de Compostela on Friday.

Forensic police were working with "mangled bodies", he said, some of which where hard to identify because of the injuries sustained.

Police said the lower death toll arose because some body parts had been wrongly identified in the initial stages as coming from several people when they were from the same person.

Three foreigners are among the dead - an American, an Algerian and a Mexican, the head of the Spanish national police force's forensics department, Antonio del Amo, told the news conference.

Police used DNA samples, dental records and fingerprints to identity the dead and would now use "other tactics" to identify the six remaining victims, he added, without giving details on what the other methods were.

The crash injured more than 100 people, of whom 81 remain in hospital, 31 of them - including three children - in a serious condition, Galicia health services said.

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