One dead, four seriously injured in train accident near Barcelona

One person died and four were seriously injured after a train near Barcelona ploughed into the rubble of a collapsed wall on Tuesday, firefighters said, Spain's second deadly rail accident in days.

The latest incident is likely to raise more questions about Spanish rail safety after the collision of two high-speed trains in the southern region of Andalusia on Sunday killed 42 people and injured more than 120.

On Tuesday, "a retaining wall collapsed onto the tracks, causing an accident involving a passenger train" in the municipality of Gelida, around 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Barcelona, the northeastern Catalonia region's civil protection agency posted on social media.

Emergency workers used torches in the dark to survey the wreckage of the derailed train carriage which had turned into a mass of crumpled metal, an AFP reporter saw.

Catalan fire service spokesman Claudi Gallardo told reporters "there are four seriously injured and one person who has passed away" on the Barcelona-bound train, where passengers in the first carriage were most affected.

Rodalies de Catalunya, the public company that manages the region's commuter trains, said the victim was one of its employees.

Catalan emergency services said their teams treated 37 people mostly for light injuries, with 20 ambulances at the scene. Firefighters said they had to work to free a passenger from the train.

Adif, the body that manages Spain's railway infrastructure, said the wall fell as a consequence of a storm and that Catalan commuter trains would remain suspended. 

AFP