It was a quarter to ten on the morning of Monday the 7th of November, 2005, when a rumble and crash came down Río Verde; the A-7 Autovia bridge under construction had collapsed.

Besides the site workers there was one witness who managed to take the most famous photograph of the disaster, Fred Nederlof from the Netherlands.

He had pulled up in his car and had taken a couple of shots with his camera — nothing fancy, just something for holiday snaps. He was getting back into the car when he hear the groan of twisting metal and managed to fire off two quick photos on noddy settings — had it been a more expensive camera, he wouldn’t have time to catch the bridge falling.

But in that photos the bodies of workers trapped on the structure were not discernible, but they were there because six workers, most of whom were from Portugal, lost their lives that day. The ones on the bridge fell about 80 metres, tangled in the wreckage.

The dead were Marcio Adriano, Joaquín, Francisco, Antonio Fernando, Paulo Felipe and Eduardo, five of whom were Portuguese, one was from Galicia. Three others were seriously injured.

One man had a lucky escape, he had walked out of the workers hut directly under the bridge moments as the collapse began and he threw himself clear. But his workmate was inside and was killed. He sat on a bank on the hillside as the fire personnel searched through the piles of tangled metal below and cried — who could blame him.

I had been working as the editor nearly three years when this happened and chance would have it my sister was living in Torrecuevas. My brother-in-law phoned me almost immediately after the collapse to say that there had been an almighty crash and a huge cloud of dust was rising up from the bridge-construction site, which was just visible from their terrace. So I rushed around there with my camera.

Standing metres away from the worker who was crying on the hillside, I snapped off dozens of photos. Some of which were quite gruesome, which we never published for obvious reasons.

So what had happened? The technique to bridge the gap between the towering bridge supports was a case of inching forward a huge iron tray using cranes and once in place, filling them will reinforced concrete. But it appears that the tray or cimbal as it is known in Spanish, had locked on properly to the clamps on the next pillar, causing it to twist over and crashed down.

Fire personnel from Almuñécar and Motril worked all night to recover the bodies using blow torches to cut through the metal beams but they didn’t stop until they had recovered the dead workers. Some bodies were intact, other were not.

Some workers up on the structure had saved their lives because they were wearing harnesses attached to the structure that remained and were left dangling 80 metres up. Others were fatally tethered to the structure that came down.

Juan Carlos Benavides was the Mayor at the time, and expressed his view that he had his doubts whether the accident could have been prevented. He said that they had feared the death toll would be much higher but in the end, thank God, it was not.

The Town Hall paid the travel expenses of bringing the families of the dead Portuguese workers to Almuñécar. The following year a memorial plaque was unveiled on the other side of the road next to the bridge. As for construction work on the bridge, it was halted until after the enquiry and trial in 2009.

And what of the trial? It was a company from Galicia, specialised in prefabricated structures that had won the contract. But they subcontracted the job to the Portuguese company, Moro Montedouro.

There had been a triple investigation into the accident by the Judicial Police by the Ministry of Work and by work inspectors belonging to the two main workers unions, UGT and CCOO. The Public Prosecutor had recommended 288 years imprisonment of the 11 people accused of negligent manslaughter. The case was tried in Motril on the 14th of March, 2012 and all eleven were acquitted as the judge considered that there was no case against them and considered instead that it had “just been bad luck.”

Now, before we wrap this up, it is worth mentioning that this subcontracting was and still is rife in public contracts. One company offers the low price, the Government accepts the bid, the company then subcontracts the task to another company for a lower amount, keeping the difference, and so on, so in the end, a company that would never have been awarded the task does it for peanuts, cutting corners and the outcome…

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

Keywords: A-7, Bridge Collapse, Torrecuevas, Río Verde, Portuguese workers, killed, Fred Nederlof

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