Tamara González Costa was travelling in carriage 8, seat 12B, when the crash between an AVE and an Iryo train occurred near Urda, Toledo, on 28 October. Her family has confirmed the 31-year-old scientist’s death. González was from Bembibre in León and stood about 1.57 metres tall.
González was affiliated with the Instituto de Biotecnología Molecular de Viena and had previously worked at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC). She was travelling for work on a Renfe train to attend a scientific conference in Seville.
After the crash, relatives and friends searched for González, and her parents reportedly filed a missing-person report. CNIC also appealed for information about her. Family notices identified her carriage and seat, details that helped distinguish her among passengers being sought after the accident.
The reported death toll rose during the first 48 hours as rescue and identification operations continued, alongside recovery work. By 30 October, Castilla-La Mancha president Emiliano García-Page and Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez had confirmed 68 deaths: 44 people travelling on the Iryo train and 24 on the Renfe AVE. A contemporaneous report gave a provisional count of 69 fatalities.
The report also named Cambridge-based scientist Marta Shahbazi, 41, among those missing at the time. She was travelling in carriage 8 of the AVE to El Rompido, Huelva, for a conference and an award ceremony organized by the Sociedad Española de Biología del Desarrollo. Shahbazi leads a laboratory at the University of Cambridge’s MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and researches the earliest stages of human development. She was due to receive recognition for her contribution to the field.
Shahbazi is the mother of two children, aged three and seven. At the time of the report, her death had not been confirmed. The search for missing passengers after the crash was also covered in an earlier report from Urda.
