周三接近08:30（07:30 GMT），马德里开往塞维利亚的两列高速列车正行驶在一条铁路上。一列由国有运营商Renfe运营，载有397名乘客；在其前方同一条铁路上，还有一列Iryo私营运营商的列车，载有147名乘客。据报，该线路自动信号系统出现故障——计算机故障——导致所有列车在该段线路被迫停车。
It was approaching 08:30 (07:30 GMT) on a normal Wednesday. Two high-speed trains were travelling south from the Spanish capital, Madrid, to Seville. One, run by state-owned operator Renfe had 397 passengers on board. Ahead of it on the same line was a train of Iryo private operator with 147 passengers. A reported issue with the automatic signalling system - a computer failure - had forced all trains to halt on the affected stretch.
然后，西班牙交通部长说，发生了“不可能的事”，当时Renfe列车的司机被命令以“错误”模式继续行驶。
Then the impossible happened, Spain's transport minister said, as the Renfe train was ordered to proceed in "error".
列车撞上了另一列火车，地点位于马德里以南约140公里（87英里）的莫拉和奥尔加两市之间。
It crashed into the back of the other train between municipalities Mora and Orgaz, about 140km (87 miles) south of Madrid.
一些乘客正在睡觉，一些已经打开笔记本电脑开始工作，还有一些在手机上浏览应用程序。
Some of the passengers were asleep, some had already started their working day on laptops - and others scrolled through their apps on their phones.
旅程被中断，广播称轨道上有拥堵。这持续了数分钟——对一些人来说稍长一点，对另一些人则短得多。
The journey was interrupted with an announcement that there was congestion on the tracks. This lasted a few minutes - for some, a bit longer for others.
22岁的唐基·宾尼尔（Tangui Binier）坐在Iryo列车的第八节车厢。他的父亲坐在第七节车厢。
Tangui Binier, 22, was in the Iryo train, the front carriage, number eight. His father was in number seven.
他们的列车是六列被要求在08:30停车的列车之一。几分钟后，“列车开始加速”，宾尼尔告诉BBC，“然后突然停下”。
Their train was one of six to have been ordered to stop at 08:30. A few minutes later, "the train started speeding", Binier told the BBC, "then it came to a sudden halt".
他困惑地望向窗外，看到“左侧电线垂落下来，然后后面全是烟”。西班牙记者罗伯托·戈麦斯（Roberto Gómez）正在高速Renfe列车上打瞌睡，距离宾尼尔的列车超过25公里（16英里）。
Baffled, he looked out of the window and saw "wires on the left side come down, and then there being just a lot of smoke behind us." Spanish journalist Roberto Gómez was dozing on the high-speed Renfe train which had stopped more than 25km (16 miles) away from Binier's.
那只是短暂的停靠。几分钟后，列车再次开始移动，戈麦斯解释说，然后撞车发生了。
It was a brief stop. A few minutes later, the train began to move again, he explained, and then the crash happened.
他不知道在08:36他的列车已被命令继续行程，大约17分钟后，西班牙交通部长奥斯卡·普恩特（Óscar Puente）所说的“真正难以置信的事”发生了。
He did not know that at 08:36 his train had been ordered to proceed with the journey and some 17 minutes later the "truly unbelievable" happened, Spain's Transport Minister Óscar Puente said.
“撞击非常可怕，”戈麦斯对Onda Cero电台说。“你可以想象，车厢完全毁了。所有的行李箱都散落在毁坏的车厢里。”戈麦斯只受了轻伤，但描述说另一名乘客跌落在他身上，头部受了深深的一道伤口。“我们能够帮助那些胸部和肋骨遭受严重撞击的人，”他说。
"The impact was terrible," Gómez told Onda Cero radio. "You can imagine, the carriage is completely destroyed. All the suitcases are all over the wrecked carriage." Gómez suffered only minor injuries but described another passenger falling on top of him and sustaining a deep gash on his head. "We were able to help people who had suffered severe blows to their chest and ribs," he said.
拉斐尔·巴塞洛当时在受灾最严重的车厢之一。额头上的瘀伤让他成了幸运的幸存者之一。撞击发生时他正在喝咖啡，“感觉到了巨大的冲击力”。“我们所有人都被抛向了空中，”他在事故现场对路透社记者说。
Rafael Barcelo was in one of the worst-affected carriages. A bruise on his forehead makes him one of the lucky survivors. He was having a coffee at the time of the crash and "felt a huge impact". "We were all thrown into the air," he told Reuters news agency at the site of the crash.
“我情况还算好，我朋友的情况严重得多。”“我坐在七号车厢，那是受害者最多、毁坏最严重的车厢。我至少在那节车厢里数到了八名受害者，”他说，看上去非常震惊。
"I am reasonably OK, my friend is quite worse." "I was travelling in coach seven, which is the one with more victims and the one most destroyed. I at least counted eight victims in that coach," he said, visibly shocked.
据萨尔瓦多·阿里萨说，即使是在离撞击点最远的Renfe列车车厢里，“一切都完全毁了——座位脱落，大多数朝着与列车行驶方向相同方向坐着的人都被抛向了空中”。“情况非常惨烈，”他说，并描述一些人“被卡在座位之间”。出来后，他看到了情况有多糟。
Even in the carriages farthest away from the impact on the Renfe train "everything was completely destroyed - the seats were detached, and most of the people who were travelling facing the same direction as the train were thrown into the air", according to Salvador Arriza. "It was something brutal," he said, describing how some people "were trapped between the seats". Once out, he saw how bad the situation was.
“引起我注意的是，其中一节车厢的车顶被一段铁轨贯穿了，我认为这可能有助于停止或减缓列车的惯性。”塞巴斯蒂安·埃雷罗乘坐的是被从后方撞击的列车，“可怕，极其可怕的撞击”把他抛到了前面的座位上。
"What caught my attention is that in one of the coaches there was a piece of train track that went through the roof of the coach, and I think that might have helped to stop or reduce the inertia of the train." Sebastián Herrero was travelling in the train which was hit from the rear and the "terrible, terrible impact" threw him on to the seats in front.
“我们跌落后，有很多人鼻子骨折、手臂骨折……我们开始到处看到烟雾。”最初的撞击结束后，比尼耶尔所在车厢的乘客们争论是否安全离开，因为列车外散落着电线。一些乘客担心后方列车追尾，决定离开车厢。
"After we fell, there were many people with broken noses, broken arms... We started seeing smoke everywhere." Once the initial impact was over, passengers in Binier's carriage debated whether it was safe to leave because of the electrical wires strewn outside the train. Some were worried about the risk of another train colliding and decided to exit.
“直到我们走出车厢，才知道发生了什么，现场留有事故的痕迹，”他告诉英国广播公司（BBC）。
"We did not know what had happened until we took a step outside, and there there was evidence of what had happened.
“我们看到了停在我们列车后方的另一列火车，也看到了我们的列车完全翻覆，车尾满是残骸。”
"We saw the other train behind ours and we saw our train completely flipped over and the back side full of debris," he told the BBC.
“走出列车时我完全处于震惊和惊骇之中。现场有人处于险境，场面惨不忍睹，有尸体，有断肢。”“我不知道自己能否从中走出来。”但他表示，肾上腺素飙升，他和其他未受伤的乘客一样，投入到了救援中。
"When I got out of the train I was in complete shock, complete awe. There were people in danger, it was very hard to see, there was dead bodies, there was missing limbs. " "I don't know if that is something I will ever recover from." But the adrenaline kicked in, he said, and those like him who had not suffered any injuries went to help.
救援者中包括他的父亲，他解释说父亲“背着一个髋部骨折的女孩把她带到了安全的地方”。不久，当地居民赶到，随后是西班牙国家宪兵队的警力和救护车。
Among them was his dad, who he explained was "able to carry a girl to safety, with a broken hip". It was not long before local people arrived, followed by the police and ambulance services of the Guardia Civil.
“我真的是最幸运的人之一，我觉得自己太幸运了，眼睁睁看着其他人没那么幸运，就近在咫尺。有时你不禁会问自己：‘为什么是我？’”他说。
"I'm really one of the most fortunate people and the luckiest person. I feel like just I'm so fortunate and I see other people who are not so fortunate, and I see them very close up. Sometimes you just ask yourself 'Why me?'," he said.
西班牙此前刚经历一月份科尔多瓦附近阿达穆斯高铁惨剧的打击，那起事故造成46人死亡。
Spain was already reeling from the Adamuz high-speed rail disaster outside Córdoba in January, in which 46 people died. It happened on the same high-speed rail line, but much further south.
两起事故发生在同一条高速铁路线上，但地点相距甚远，位于更南端。因此，周三的事故给当局提出了许多疑问。受影响乡客明显愤怒。
So Wednesday's accident has raised many questions for the authorities. Affected passengers were visibly angry. "It isn't possible that our train was stopped for five or 10 minutes and that the other train wasn't told to stop," one of them said.
“我们的列车停了五到十分钟，而另一列火车却没有接到停车指令，这不可能，”一名乘客说。
"How can this happen with the technology we have?," they added. "It's not normal. We weren't told anything.
“以我们拥有的技术，怎么会发生这种事？这不正常。我们什么都没被告知。应该被告知的是另一列火车的司机。只要另一列火车收到警告，我们不在乎。我无法理解。”他补充道。
The person who should have been told something was the driver of the other train. We wouldn't have cared as long as the other train had been warned. I don't understand this."