THE Guardia Civil has told courts investigating the Adamuz train disaster that documents regarding the tracks where one of the trains derailed may have been tampered with.
Included in the most recent Guardia Civil official report, warnings of key documents containing ‘unwarranted signatures’ have been made by the commission for the investigation of railway accidents (CIAF).
Of primary concern are welding reports and neutralisation records created by Galician company Maquisaba who were responsible for works on the tracks.
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These works included the weld which has been identified as the first point that the rail fractured during the Adamuz crash which killed 45 people.Â
Located at kilometre point 318+681 on the track, it is believed that the failure of this weld could have caused the tracks to break and ultimately led to the derailment and disaster.
Now the whole chain of control over this track welding is under judicial investigation and technical scrutiny because of several signatures on the documents.
These signatures include ‘scanned images of an easily manipulated handwritten signature,’ according to the CIAF.
The police have also reported that ‘there are no guarantees regarding the signatures appearing on many of the documents’.
This lack of certainty could compromise the formal reliability of the files.
These documents are not the first thing to spark concern over the track management: the Guardia Civil had already informed Montoro court, which is handling investigations, that Adif, Spain’s state-owned rail company, may have transferred sections of the track to the Hornachuelos warehouse without judicial permission.
Adif’s outsourcing is also being scrutinised with papers provided by engineering firm Ayesa, who they contracted in 2025 to oversee renovation works at the Adamuz junction station (PB), raising further questions.
An Ayesa document drawn up on June 25 2025 was modified three days later and then after the accident a new version of it appeared on February 1 2026.
This document was called Informe final de soldaduras aluminotermicas del PB de Adamuz (Cordoba – Sevilla), meaning ‘Final report on aluminothermic welding at the Adamuz PB (Cordoba – Seville)’.
CIAF is concerned by an ‘inconsistency in the two versions’ but is not able to ‘know exactly which part of the document has been modified at which point in time’.
The Guardia Civil has seen contradictions in numerous documents with the head of the CIAF, Iñaki Barron warning of ‘different inconsistencies’ found during analysis last month.
Prior to this the Guardia Civil had already warned the court that the CIAF had discovered ‘various inconsistencies’ in documentation from Adif.
Adif has however responded to these claims and stated that they did not manipulate any of the documents, with sources telling SUR that all the required papers were given to authorities ‘without any retouching’.
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