13 Foreign Students Killed in Spain Bus Crash

VOA News
20 March 2016

At least 13 people were killed Sunday when a bus carrying foreign students crashed on a Spanish highway between the cities of Barcelona and Valencia.

At least 34 passengers on the bus were injured; 28 of them were hospitalized. Most were foreign students, part of the Erasmus exchange program, who had traveled to the eastern city of Valencia for the renowned Fallas fireworks festival and were returning when the bus crashed.

Those on board the bus were students from Britain, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Italy, Peru, Bulgaria, Poland, Ireland, the Palestinian territories, Japan and Ukraine, Spanish officials said.

Authorities said the bus driver, being held at a police station in the city of Tortosa, tested negative for drugs and alcohol.

The Fallas festival is held each year in Valencia on the feast day of Saint Joseph and draws thousands of tourists from across the world.

Large wooden monuments and effigies representing famous people, often in humorous postures, are burned in a colorful ceremony accompanied by a cacophonous barrage of very noisy fireworks.